This game is pretty good I also remember playing it at the arcade when I was younger.
Big fan of the aggressive colors and motion sensor mechanics but otherwise it's a fairly slow run-n-gun with occasional dives into shoot-em-up and beat-em-up gameplay. It's charming, I'd play it again if I saw the cabinet, mostly due to it being a title that's easy to learn and improve at, but otherwise a little dull.
Fun Konami Arcade game, I like the weird movie differences too like Ripley's color scheme. AVP is the superior Alien Arcade experience but this is also great.
Interesting belt-scrolling run-and-gun from Konami. I feel like it's too repetitive and dull to really be all that fun to play, though. Japanese version is better than the World/US version (the latter mostly just makes it more tedious), but even that one I'm not a huge fan of.
Aliens (1990): Tiene detalles muy chulos y a nivel técnico impresiona para la época, pero se acaba haciendo repetitivo muy rápido. Apenas enemigos, todos los fondos iguales y un par de armas. No hace nada que no hiciese Contra años antes y se siente más como una buena skin (6,40)
A walk-'n-gun with Konami quality, from the vivid color palette to the spectacular weapon effects. Good variety for a short campaign, especially with its faux-3D shooting sections, though the whole thing feels just a bit light on content.
Good side scrolling shooter based on Aliens. Simple controls, movement, shooting while standing, and shooting while ducking. Rapid fire gun can be upgraded into a flamethrower, seeking rocket launcher, or a spread shot. Can pick up some mostly useless bombs that it will throw when you push the shoot while ducking button. Mixes things up with vent segments and turning into a vertical shoot em up at some points. Good, though strange, enemy variety. Not made to be overly difficult.
I don't know maybe Aliens could have been improved with flying Xenomorph heads, mutant soldiers and giant spiders
Lamest death scream of all videogames.
played with C_F via fightcade
Pretty mediocre, really. We fed so many credits that I don't think I ever really grasped what was taking place, similar to Konami's TMNT game the previous year. I did feel that the controls were quite limited, and the sfx were a little grating (especially on death, which happened a lot). Looks quite nice for the time, though.
Either way, as a whole Aliens doesn't deliver much and gets beaten out hardcore by some of Konami's other run and guns. It's quite hard not to notice with the masterful Sunset Riders releasing only a year after, but in addition the already existing Contra ports for home consoles were much more enjoyable as well.
I read somewhere that this was slated for a Genesis release in 1991, but it failed to materialize. Probably would have felt redundant anyway with Alien Storm releasing for the console that same year. I would definitely replay Alien Storm over this.
Pretty mediocre, really. We fed so many credits that I don't think I ever really grasped what was taking place, similar to Konami's TMNT game the previous year. I did feel that the controls were quite limited, and the sfx were a little grating (especially on death, which happened a lot). Looks quite nice for the time, though.
Either way, as a whole Aliens doesn't deliver much and gets beaten out hardcore by some of Konami's other run and guns. It's quite hard not to notice with the masterful Sunset Riders releasing only a year after, but in addition the already existing Contra ports for home consoles were much more enjoyable as well.
I read somewhere that this was slated for a Genesis release in 1991, but it failed to materialize. Probably would have felt redundant anyway with Alien Storm releasing for the console that same year. I would definitely replay Alien Storm over this.
Shockingly dull. Like playing Contra at quarter speed.
Pas très fan du choix des couleurs dans le jeu mais ça reste sympa à jouer, pas trop long et la difficulté est assez acceptable pour un jeu d'arcade.
Konami was one of the major video game developers in the eighties and nineties, but a prosperity in amaranthines is usually backed by mediocre titles to fill up the roster. A workhorse in the case of Konami would possibly be seen as a runner in other circumstances, but that didn't prevent them from the occasional odd decision.
I mean, yeah, just as on other games like R-Type back in 1987, H.R.Giger's designs had a significant influence on Contra, so Konami probably liked Aliens, but licensing a movie four years after its release?
I admit, things had been going slower in the eighties. It took quite a while for motion pictures to be distributed internationally and availability of rental tapes was a snail operation. You then often had to wait more than a year until you could actually buy the VHS finally and catching something on TV took ages till it happened. The target group probably was just discovering the movies and meanwhile, the Alien franchise was kept alive in pop culture by the Dark Horse comic books.
One thing though caught my attention, as I was previously researching on Konami's 1992 X-Men Beat'em'up, that somehow was peculiar, too. Marvel had its ups and downs at the time and despite action figures have played a role in their survival, there firstly was a quite popular X-Men cartoon shortly after the brawler got released, though it had nothing in common with the game.
In fact, the brawler was based upon the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men that didn't convince enough with another baffling choice, the use of designs from a more successful X-Men era around 1980. Probably the writing wasn't the best either. But was it just a cheap license for Konami back then, or did they forecast the X-Men heralding a new era?
Filming for Alien³ finally started in January 1991, after several drafts had been pitched since 1987. Konami could have actually speculated on the revival and echo. If you experienced Batmania around 89/90, you knew movies could still have an impact of enormous proportions and it was then, when Konami's business with western licenses such as Turtles, Simpsons, G.I. Joe or Asterix flourished.
But why then was the game released a whole year before the new movie even was shot? Was there enough anticipation to be exploited before a possible Alien³ license game came out? Did Konami intend to apply for a follow up license or was that already gone to Probe for development of home versions? With Sega's rail shooter Alien³: The Gun hitting the arcades not earlier than 1993, there might have still been an open slot. I rarely have so many unanswered questions about a game.
But back to Aliens. After a few not so noteworthy adaptations on home computers, none other than Square had obtained an Aliens sublicense from Activision to program Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in 1987. So there was an actual Run and Gun game before, that kinda stayed true to the movie.
Well, you were clearing areas filled with roaming Facehuggers, Chestbursters and Warriors with the Queen as boss for each stage. Some victims had been woven in the background and some Xenomorph heads and bodies were attached to the walls.
Konami built upon that, loosely adapting the patterns with their formidably matching routines of corridors, shafts, sewers and the random elevator of course. Though digitized images from the movie set the mood as an intro, they supposedly didn't license the actor likenesses for Ripley (player 1) and Hicks (player 2).
We immediately notice one major difference to the Square version, as the characters don't jump, which is realistic, due to the large rifle, but plays counter intuitively within the genre. This sure is neither the next Contra nor your average brawler. You have one action button for a standing and another for a crouched shot.
As you need the hunkered position for the feebles, but will also hit most large critters with it, it is more likely you keep walking stages firing like an epileptic crab, which indeed plays as awkward as it sounds. Also for boss patterns it is therefore more relaxing to team up, just as games like Aliens are intended for.
Konami have made a few additions that I'd like to focus on following the exposition. Aliens was a change for the franchise as it wasn't suspenseful survival inspired by movies like The Thing From Another World, Forbidden World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space or Planet of the Vampires anymore. After we've seen the threat, the theme could easily be transferred into dark eighties action horror. A perfect scenario for a shooter.
But do you remember 1990? Things had been intense primary or neon colors back then, heavy metal has drifted away from being evil and most horror films were comedies. R-Rated movie franchises like Rambo or Robocop had branched out as cartoons aimed at children.
Kenner, known for their Star Wars toys, had already tried to follow the success with the Alien brand in 1979, though it remained a short-lived experiment due to massive resistance against those horror creatures. But we know today that in 1992, Aliens returned to become their next top seller for a couple of waves.
Remember I was mentioning that canceled X-Men show? Well, Kenner came up with the idea to promote their Alien toys as a multimedia brand named Operation: Aliens. Whilst few products got in circulation, the planned cartoon under the same moniker got dumped under mysterious circumstances.
You can speculate it had something to do with the wild production history of Alien³ the line was supposed to complement. Another reason might be Fox thought of the concept as too gruesome, especially after a renewed act for children's TV, that was affecting marketing strategies as well.
The fascinating point is, that we don't know the role Konami played between all that, as their Aliens game seemingly precedes that schedule by roughly two years.
Konami and Kenner, the latter then decided to still release the toys under the Aliens banner, had been facing the same problem: The Alien beastiary at the time was quite limited. So just as Kenner decided to imaginatively create Xenomorphs in motley images of the former lifeform they infested, Konami brought in new organism variants.
Though stage boss designs merged with video game tropes, especially other minions got mocked for their supposedly non-canonical appearance. I'd argue that ideas have been nicked from other Post-Alien media like Carpenter's The Thing, so that a spider, a gargoyle or a zombie can be seen as genre typical embellishment.
The more interesting question to me is, was it just Konami hitting Zeitgeist or was there an actual interaction between creators? Was the more colorful approach a well of ideas to Kenner in the end?
Despite the cinematic ending, Konami's Aliens is otherwise to me nothing but light entertainment within a genre I like and based on a franchise I love. It's good for half an hour of fun every other year, especially accompanied by a good friend.
In my opinion though you're lucky finding a machine based on the Japanese version, that compared to the US cabinet isn't only having the more accurate color palette, but also appears more balanced by omitting the unwieldy vertical vehicle passage.
If it wasn't for the franchise then that version would have to be compared to the contemporary Alien Storm, whose Shinobi inspired cross hairs passages might be from a more static position, but still turns out as the more dynamic (and playable) alternative.
Direct competition might just as well have been a reason Aliens hadn't been unleashed to the Mega Drive, though it could have been released for the SNES that first became available by the end of November 1990 in Japan. On the other hand, Konami had to prioritize their own franchises as well, starting with Gradius III, and as far as I remember Nintendo still limited releases to keep a higher level of quality either.
Based upon those factors Konami might have even decided to only license the movie rights for a one off not to be adapted on other platforms. Before mentioned X-Men is another one of those odd licenses maintaining exclusivity to the arcades, that got challenged by the increasing technical quality of home consoles of course.
On the other hand, Aliens isn't exactly the game I would have picked to be amongst the five or six titles I could afford in a year as a kid. Maybe it's just perfect the way it went. Between a few hidden gems and the classics available on numerous compilations anyway, we still need a couple of programs at recent arcades or video game museums, that we can enjoy without regrets about that we can't really take them home.
As most players will not rush through on a single credit at first try, but the motivation for constant replays isn't all that high in my opinion, Aliens might actually be one of the machines you could be able to quickly set a new high score at your local arcade. That's one more reason to waste some change on a not more than decent license game, whose selling points aren't too strong individually, but add up to compensate for its deficiencies.
I mean, yeah, just as on other games like R-Type back in 1987, H.R.Giger's designs had a significant influence on Contra, so Konami probably liked Aliens, but licensing a movie four years after its release?
I admit, things had been going slower in the eighties. It took quite a while for motion pictures to be distributed internationally and availability of rental tapes was a snail operation. You then often had to wait more than a year until you could actually buy the VHS finally and catching something on TV took ages till it happened. The target group probably was just discovering the movies and meanwhile, the Alien franchise was kept alive in pop culture by the Dark Horse comic books.
One thing though caught my attention, as I was previously researching on Konami's 1992 X-Men Beat'em'up, that somehow was peculiar, too. Marvel had its ups and downs at the time and despite action figures have played a role in their survival, there firstly was a quite popular X-Men cartoon shortly after the brawler got released, though it had nothing in common with the game.
In fact, the brawler was based upon the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men that didn't convince enough with another baffling choice, the use of designs from a more successful X-Men era around 1980. Probably the writing wasn't the best either. But was it just a cheap license for Konami back then, or did they forecast the X-Men heralding a new era?
Filming for Alien³ finally started in January 1991, after several drafts had been pitched since 1987. Konami could have actually speculated on the revival and echo. If you experienced Batmania around 89/90, you knew movies could still have an impact of enormous proportions and it was then, when Konami's business with western licenses such as Turtles, Simpsons, G.I. Joe or Asterix flourished.
But why then was the game released a whole year before the new movie even was shot? Was there enough anticipation to be exploited before a possible Alien³ license game came out? Did Konami intend to apply for a follow up license or was that already gone to Probe for development of home versions? With Sega's rail shooter Alien³: The Gun hitting the arcades not earlier than 1993, there might have still been an open slot. I rarely have so many unanswered questions about a game.
But back to Aliens. After a few not so noteworthy adaptations on home computers, none other than Square had obtained an Aliens sublicense from Activision to program Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in 1987. So there was an actual Run and Gun game before, that kinda stayed true to the movie.
Well, you were clearing areas filled with roaming Facehuggers, Chestbursters and Warriors with the Queen as boss for each stage. Some victims had been woven in the background and some Xenomorph heads and bodies were attached to the walls.
Konami built upon that, loosely adapting the patterns with their formidably matching routines of corridors, shafts, sewers and the random elevator of course. Though digitized images from the movie set the mood as an intro, they supposedly didn't license the actor likenesses for Ripley (player 1) and Hicks (player 2).
We immediately notice one major difference to the Square version, as the characters don't jump, which is realistic, due to the large rifle, but plays counter intuitively within the genre. This sure is neither the next Contra nor your average brawler. You have one action button for a standing and another for a crouched shot.
As you need the hunkered position for the feebles, but will also hit most large critters with it, it is more likely you keep walking stages firing like an epileptic crab, which indeed plays as awkward as it sounds. Also for boss patterns it is therefore more relaxing to team up, just as games like Aliens are intended for.
Konami have made a few additions that I'd like to focus on following the exposition. Aliens was a change for the franchise as it wasn't suspenseful survival inspired by movies like The Thing From Another World, Forbidden World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space or Planet of the Vampires anymore. After we've seen the threat, the theme could easily be transferred into dark eighties action horror. A perfect scenario for a shooter.
But do you remember 1990? Things had been intense primary or neon colors back then, heavy metal has drifted away from being evil and most horror films were comedies. R-Rated movie franchises like Rambo or Robocop had branched out as cartoons aimed at children.
Kenner, known for their Star Wars toys, had already tried to follow the success with the Alien brand in 1979, though it remained a short-lived experiment due to massive resistance against those horror creatures. But we know today that in 1992, Aliens returned to become their next top seller for a couple of waves.
Remember I was mentioning that canceled X-Men show? Well, Kenner came up with the idea to promote their Alien toys as a multimedia brand named Operation: Aliens. Whilst few products got in circulation, the planned cartoon under the same moniker got dumped under mysterious circumstances.
You can speculate it had something to do with the wild production history of Alien³ the line was supposed to complement. Another reason might be Fox thought of the concept as too gruesome, especially after a renewed act for children's TV, that was affecting marketing strategies as well.
The fascinating point is, that we don't know the role Konami played between all that, as their Aliens game seemingly precedes that schedule by roughly two years.
Konami and Kenner, the latter then decided to still release the toys under the Aliens banner, had been facing the same problem: The Alien beastiary at the time was quite limited. So just as Kenner decided to imaginatively create Xenomorphs in motley images of the former lifeform they infested, Konami brought in new organism variants.
Though stage boss designs merged with video game tropes, especially other minions got mocked for their supposedly non-canonical appearance. I'd argue that ideas have been nicked from other Post-Alien media like Carpenter's The Thing, so that a spider, a gargoyle or a zombie can be seen as genre typical embellishment.
The more interesting question to me is, was it just Konami hitting Zeitgeist or was there an actual interaction between creators? Was the more colorful approach a well of ideas to Kenner in the end?
Despite the cinematic ending, Konami's Aliens is otherwise to me nothing but light entertainment within a genre I like and based on a franchise I love. It's good for half an hour of fun every other year, especially accompanied by a good friend.
In my opinion though you're lucky finding a machine based on the Japanese version, that compared to the US cabinet isn't only having the more accurate color palette, but also appears more balanced by omitting the unwieldy vertical vehicle passage.
If it wasn't for the franchise then that version would have to be compared to the contemporary Alien Storm, whose Shinobi inspired cross hairs passages might be from a more static position, but still turns out as the more dynamic (and playable) alternative.
Direct competition might just as well have been a reason Aliens hadn't been unleashed to the Mega Drive, though it could have been released for the SNES that first became available by the end of November 1990 in Japan. On the other hand, Konami had to prioritize their own franchises as well, starting with Gradius III, and as far as I remember Nintendo still limited releases to keep a higher level of quality either.
Based upon those factors Konami might have even decided to only license the movie rights for a one off not to be adapted on other platforms. Before mentioned X-Men is another one of those odd licenses maintaining exclusivity to the arcades, that got challenged by the increasing technical quality of home consoles of course.
On the other hand, Aliens isn't exactly the game I would have picked to be amongst the five or six titles I could afford in a year as a kid. Maybe it's just perfect the way it went. Between a few hidden gems and the classics available on numerous compilations anyway, we still need a couple of programs at recent arcades or video game museums, that we can enjoy without regrets about that we can't really take them home.
As most players will not rush through on a single credit at first try, but the motivation for constant replays isn't all that high in my opinion, Aliens might actually be one of the machines you could be able to quickly set a new high score at your local arcade. That's one more reason to waste some change on a not more than decent license game, whose selling points aren't too strong individually, but add up to compensate for its deficiencies.
Xenomorfo voador!?!
Aliens da Konami talvez seja o jogo mais divertido e surtado quê joguei de Alien (franquia), vagamente baseado no segundo filme, esse jogo enche a tela com o mais puro suco de criatividade baseado em aliens, de aliens voadores a zumbis(que sinceramente quero saber por quê existe tanto jogo Alien com zumbi, será que isso estava em algum concept ou quadrinho que não vi?).
O levels são bem interessantes variando de estagios de esgoto a carros, tudo organizado cinematicamente.
Um bom sistema de armas e boss variados, meu único problema é o dano gerado por qualquer inimigo meio boca, tirando isso é muito bom!
Se nunca jogou de um chance!
Aliens da Konami talvez seja o jogo mais divertido e surtado quê joguei de Alien (franquia), vagamente baseado no segundo filme, esse jogo enche a tela com o mais puro suco de criatividade baseado em aliens, de aliens voadores a zumbis(que sinceramente quero saber por quê existe tanto jogo Alien com zumbi, será que isso estava em algum concept ou quadrinho que não vi?).
O levels são bem interessantes variando de estagios de esgoto a carros, tudo organizado cinematicamente.
Um bom sistema de armas e boss variados, meu único problema é o dano gerado por qualquer inimigo meio boca, tirando isso é muito bom!
Se nunca jogou de um chance!
Very loosely based on the movie. Wonderful side scrolling shoot-em-up with all manner of Alien beasties to blast into acidy goo. Until the franchise's reinvention during the mid-90s with the inclusion of the Predator characters it was the quintessential Aliens experience we all needed.