Alien Quake
released on Jun 30, 1997
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Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/mod-corner-alien-quake-quake-review/
The moment that a lot of of early First Person Shooters gave users the ability to mod the game, such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, etc, became the moment that a lot of people saw the opportunity to make a video game version of their favorite franchise. One of the most popular ones to make into a First Person Shooter is the Alien franchise, probably due to Aliens being heavily action focused and already being the inspiration for a lot of games, such as Contra and Metroid. One of the earliest and more infamous examples of an Alien mod is Alien Quake, obviously for Quake 1.
Mild spoilers for Aliens ahead in this plot summary, but if you’re clicking a mod for Aliens, you’ve probably already seen it.
Taking place 50 years after the original incident on LV-426, you play as a hardened mercenary hired by a rival company to investigate a rumor that Weyland Yutani has begun to rebuild Hadley’s Hope. Going in alone, your job is to sniff out the details of what they’re up to. While sneaking in, you were captured and placed in a holding cell awaiting interrogation. A week after sitting in your cell, one of the guards interrogating you has something rip it’s way out of his chest, killing him instantly, before running off into the darkness. Before you can take in what you’ve seen, you hear an inhuman sound before being knocked out. You wake up an undetermined amount of time later, with the door to your cell open. Now knowing that Weyland Yutani is definitely up to something involving the Xenomorph, you grab the gun from the now corpse and head out to figure out exactly whats going on before you escape from this hell hole.
None of this plot shows up in the actual game, all of this is in the Readme file that comes with the mod. I’ll give it a pass since this was the early days of Quake modding and expecting even the most basic cutscenes from modders is a tall order.
Being developed in 1997, about a year after the release of Quake, the game is obviously a bit rough around the edges to what Quake mods are being released more than 20 years later, and looks very much of it’s time. Even looking past this, the mod does look pretty good in some areas for when it was released, such as Hadley’s Hope looking accurate to the movie and the parts of the base being transformed by the Xenomorphs look good, along with the Xenomorphs themselves looking exactly like the movie version.
There’s even a secret hidden level that takes place on the Nostromo from the first film that looks really accurate to that movie.
Unfortunately, there is some bad level design to go along with the good game design. Some parts of levels are insanely dark, making it incredibly hard to navigate, and along with one enemy being an insta-kill making a few areas a bit frustrating to get through. Even turning up the brightness and contrast do very little to make the levels navigable. The levels aren’t confusing, just incredibly dark. It puts Doom 3 to shame with how dark it is. Muzzle flashed are going to be how you will get through an area or two of this game.
Maybe the modders wanted it to be dark to make it more scary, but they just over did it and getting through some of the darker areas can be frustrating.
This problem is compounded at the boss battle right at the end of the game where that part of the level is incredibly dark, what little light there is is flashing in and out, and to top it all of, there are large parts of the floor that are rising up, causing you to either slide down the side of them, or stop you in your tracks when you hit them, making the boss battle way more difficult than it needed to be.
All of the iconic monsters from the first three films make it into the game, 4 variations of the Xenomorph that all act the same, the Facehugger, which is a one hit kill enemy, and you know when it kills you, because all of a sudden you’ll have the Facehugger attached to your face, covering your screen, the Chestburster, which bursts out of dead bodies with Facehugers on them, and the Xenomorph Queen, which is obviously the end boss of the game.
For some reason, whenever you get into the proximity of a Xenomorph, it will play a music stinger from the movies, and it does this whenever you get near on of them, no matter if you’re coming across one for the first time or the seventeenth time, and if you end up in a situation where you’re running away from the Xenos, it can repeat numerous times. It’s probably just fan service to the films, but it’s still a weird design decision, and I don’t know why they didn’t just do it the one time when you first encounter a group of Xenomorphs.
Along with the Xenomorphs there are a few human and android enemies that are just reskins of Grunts and Enforcers, and they occasionally shout “Game over man!” when shot at. There is a new enemy called a Search Droid, but it’s just annoying. It shoots lightening at you and can take huge chunks out of your health, and the first time you come across one, you’re bound to die, and destroying one is going to take a couple of tries.
The mod does come with some music, but for some, it doesn’t play through a level or even in a certain area or situation. For some reason it seems to emanate from certain areas. It’ll be loud when you’re next to the area it’s coming from, but trail off when you leave.
The thing that makes this mod infamous in the Quake modding scene is that 20th Century Fox sent a cease and desist to the mod maker and told them to take it down from their website, since, of course, it has content from their films. This was so infamous that it coined the term “Foxed”, for when a company tries to take down a fan mod or project that contains their content. The following message was posted to their website following the takedown:
“The Alien Quake project has been discontinued by 20th Century Fox. I received an email on April 11th, 1997, from a 20th Century Fox representative that ordered us to cease all activity. The Alien Quake project was using copyrighted material without permission and this makes Alien Quake an unauthorized and illegal production. Therefore, you are hereby ordered to remove all your Alien Quake files from your computer storage. You must also remove all references to Alien Quake from any WWW pages or internet sites you keep or maintain. All distribution of Alien Quake is illegal and you should know that the Alien Quake team are under obligation to report the name and URL of any distributor to 20th Century Fox. Please let us know if you know the URL of a distributor or potential distributor.
Thank you for your co-operation.”
Since then, of course, it’s ended up on other websites such as MODDB, so it’s not difficult to find yourself a copy of this mod.
Weirdly enough, this mod got an unofficial port to the Dreamcast, and it’s a decent port for what it is. So if you’re looking for another homebrew game to pad out your Dreamcast library, Alien Quake isn’t a half bad choice.
This mod works perfect with the sourceports I’ve tried, such as Darkplaces and QuakeSpasm, so getting it running isn’t a problem. The whole mod is short and shouldn’t take you more than 45 minutes to an hour to complete, even with it’s bad lighting in areas and frustrating boss battle, and for what it’s worth, is an interesting footnote in the history of Quake mods to check out.
The moment that a lot of of early First Person Shooters gave users the ability to mod the game, such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, etc, became the moment that a lot of people saw the opportunity to make a video game version of their favorite franchise. One of the most popular ones to make into a First Person Shooter is the Alien franchise, probably due to Aliens being heavily action focused and already being the inspiration for a lot of games, such as Contra and Metroid. One of the earliest and more infamous examples of an Alien mod is Alien Quake, obviously for Quake 1.
Mild spoilers for Aliens ahead in this plot summary, but if you’re clicking a mod for Aliens, you’ve probably already seen it.
Taking place 50 years after the original incident on LV-426, you play as a hardened mercenary hired by a rival company to investigate a rumor that Weyland Yutani has begun to rebuild Hadley’s Hope. Going in alone, your job is to sniff out the details of what they’re up to. While sneaking in, you were captured and placed in a holding cell awaiting interrogation. A week after sitting in your cell, one of the guards interrogating you has something rip it’s way out of his chest, killing him instantly, before running off into the darkness. Before you can take in what you’ve seen, you hear an inhuman sound before being knocked out. You wake up an undetermined amount of time later, with the door to your cell open. Now knowing that Weyland Yutani is definitely up to something involving the Xenomorph, you grab the gun from the now corpse and head out to figure out exactly whats going on before you escape from this hell hole.
None of this plot shows up in the actual game, all of this is in the Readme file that comes with the mod. I’ll give it a pass since this was the early days of Quake modding and expecting even the most basic cutscenes from modders is a tall order.
Being developed in 1997, about a year after the release of Quake, the game is obviously a bit rough around the edges to what Quake mods are being released more than 20 years later, and looks very much of it’s time. Even looking past this, the mod does look pretty good in some areas for when it was released, such as Hadley’s Hope looking accurate to the movie and the parts of the base being transformed by the Xenomorphs look good, along with the Xenomorphs themselves looking exactly like the movie version.
There’s even a secret hidden level that takes place on the Nostromo from the first film that looks really accurate to that movie.
Unfortunately, there is some bad level design to go along with the good game design. Some parts of levels are insanely dark, making it incredibly hard to navigate, and along with one enemy being an insta-kill making a few areas a bit frustrating to get through. Even turning up the brightness and contrast do very little to make the levels navigable. The levels aren’t confusing, just incredibly dark. It puts Doom 3 to shame with how dark it is. Muzzle flashed are going to be how you will get through an area or two of this game.
Maybe the modders wanted it to be dark to make it more scary, but they just over did it and getting through some of the darker areas can be frustrating.
This problem is compounded at the boss battle right at the end of the game where that part of the level is incredibly dark, what little light there is is flashing in and out, and to top it all of, there are large parts of the floor that are rising up, causing you to either slide down the side of them, or stop you in your tracks when you hit them, making the boss battle way more difficult than it needed to be.
All of the iconic monsters from the first three films make it into the game, 4 variations of the Xenomorph that all act the same, the Facehugger, which is a one hit kill enemy, and you know when it kills you, because all of a sudden you’ll have the Facehugger attached to your face, covering your screen, the Chestburster, which bursts out of dead bodies with Facehugers on them, and the Xenomorph Queen, which is obviously the end boss of the game.
For some reason, whenever you get into the proximity of a Xenomorph, it will play a music stinger from the movies, and it does this whenever you get near on of them, no matter if you’re coming across one for the first time or the seventeenth time, and if you end up in a situation where you’re running away from the Xenos, it can repeat numerous times. It’s probably just fan service to the films, but it’s still a weird design decision, and I don’t know why they didn’t just do it the one time when you first encounter a group of Xenomorphs.
Along with the Xenomorphs there are a few human and android enemies that are just reskins of Grunts and Enforcers, and they occasionally shout “Game over man!” when shot at. There is a new enemy called a Search Droid, but it’s just annoying. It shoots lightening at you and can take huge chunks out of your health, and the first time you come across one, you’re bound to die, and destroying one is going to take a couple of tries.
The mod does come with some music, but for some, it doesn’t play through a level or even in a certain area or situation. For some reason it seems to emanate from certain areas. It’ll be loud when you’re next to the area it’s coming from, but trail off when you leave.
The thing that makes this mod infamous in the Quake modding scene is that 20th Century Fox sent a cease and desist to the mod maker and told them to take it down from their website, since, of course, it has content from their films. This was so infamous that it coined the term “Foxed”, for when a company tries to take down a fan mod or project that contains their content. The following message was posted to their website following the takedown:
“The Alien Quake project has been discontinued by 20th Century Fox. I received an email on April 11th, 1997, from a 20th Century Fox representative that ordered us to cease all activity. The Alien Quake project was using copyrighted material without permission and this makes Alien Quake an unauthorized and illegal production. Therefore, you are hereby ordered to remove all your Alien Quake files from your computer storage. You must also remove all references to Alien Quake from any WWW pages or internet sites you keep or maintain. All distribution of Alien Quake is illegal and you should know that the Alien Quake team are under obligation to report the name and URL of any distributor to 20th Century Fox. Please let us know if you know the URL of a distributor or potential distributor.
Thank you for your co-operation.”
Since then, of course, it’s ended up on other websites such as MODDB, so it’s not difficult to find yourself a copy of this mod.
Weirdly enough, this mod got an unofficial port to the Dreamcast, and it’s a decent port for what it is. So if you’re looking for another homebrew game to pad out your Dreamcast library, Alien Quake isn’t a half bad choice.
This mod works perfect with the sourceports I’ve tried, such as Darkplaces and QuakeSpasm, so getting it running isn’t a problem. The whole mod is short and shouldn’t take you more than 45 minutes to an hour to complete, even with it’s bad lighting in areas and frustrating boss battle, and for what it’s worth, is an interesting footnote in the history of Quake mods to check out.