(played with MagneticBurn)

Off the top of my head I think this is my favorite Capcom beatemup so far. Aside from being more polished than Final Fight, less tedious than Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and featuring cooler characters than both, simply having projectiles by default goes hard as hell on its own. Good shit.

Sometimes these games don't feel very soberly designed in arcade versions. There's often too many enemies on screen to count, compared to the sprite limits of a console beatemup or something. But yknow, those usually have limited continues, so I'll take this instead any day.

I've seen a lot of talk over the years about game preservation. The fact is that a lot of games older generations like myself grew up with just aren't available today unless you still have working hardware but in a lot of cases that won't last forever and disc rot is equally a thing. Some companies have begun porting their titles as a way to promote their series and get steady income, and some companies like Hamster porting arcade classics for cheap to multiple consoles help keep some of these obscure titles alive. Even with backwards compatibility and these token efforts there are often issues though like lost source code (Panzer Dragoon saga I'm looking at you) and in this case I suspect, it's license issues. The fact that Capcom released a cool little beat 'em up bundle yet didn't release The Punisher, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs and this on it is a real indication of that. It's a real shame too because Aliens vs Predator is great.

The aesthetics at work here are wonderful. Capcom's pixel art and use of bright colour mixed with the alien and predator designs make a weird blend but it all comes together in a perfect cohesion. The animations are smooth and the constant franchise nods as a fan of both series were really satisfying. It is more Alien heavy of the two with Weyland Yutani corporation, space marines, power loaders, face huggers, APCs, pulse rifles and smart guns in abundance. Speaking of which the sound for those guns feels ripped straight from the Aliens film in a surprisingly authentic way that even newer games have yet to get right and I really appreciated that detail.

For an arcade beat 'em up it does attempt to tell a story between these franchises and I prefer the plot here to the Aliens vs Predator movies that have come so far. Aliens have broken lose in a city and two marines are fighting them off when some predators arrive to help. Eventually when subduing the queen you discover Weyland Yutani corporation was behind it all trying to turn them into weapons and you need to stop them. Initially I thought it was hilarious these human marines are able to punch acid blood aliens and sometimes behead them without taking damage and also having the strength to do it. Turns out they are both cybernetically-enhanced enhanced though so that's that covered. Interestingly this was meant to be part of a tie in film that never got released:

"The game was based on an early draft of a script for a film adaptation of the Alien vs. Predator comic book series and was intended to have been a tie-in to the movie. Although the draft was later rejected in favor of a different script, Capcom had already completed the game intending for the film to be released around the time of the game's completion"

Shame. Would have preferred this.

So I've rambled enough, how does it play? The animations are nice as I mentioned before and there is a good variety of move sets between the 4 characters. You have three main moves and some sub moves from them. Melee attack, jump and ranged attack. The ranged attack of guns is extremely powerful but you either have to reload or overheat cooldown which can leave you vulnerable. The melee attack has some moves you can pull off like a slide kick, jump throws, grabs etc. as well as a special move you can use to clear the area around you. You can combo some of these together really smoothly almost like a fighting game once you learn what you are doing and you may need to as the game throws a lot of enemies at you to compensate for your powerful attacks. Most of the characters have melee weapons they start with that they drop if you get hit and have to repick up, if you don't then during that time your special attack is a bit weaker.

This is where my one criticism of the game comes in with the controls and clutter. You see the back up secondary special is hardly weak. Instead of a spear spin the predator jumps up and fires his shoulder cannon down for example, no what it does is cause interference. Visually on the screen an item with a large indicator as a distraction in itself isn't a problem but when you mix in the amount of grenades, smart guns, pulse rifles, knives on certain levels that the Weyland Yutani marines drop and it becomes an issue. when you melee attack you pick up the guns, melee attack is also to fire the disposable weapon you hold meaning quite often when simply wanting to attack I was standing there just picking up several items in a row then getting beaten up forcing me to use my ranged attack I didn't want to rather than the weapon I picked up.

It's a small design flaw and by the end it had annoyed me a little bit but hardly gets in the way of what is otherwise a super cool looking, nice playing beat 'em up. Honestly this feels like an arcade classic that if I had played in the 90's arcades would have blown me away I'm sure. It's a real shame this one will most likely be lost through time due to licensing tie ups but if you get the chance I highly recommend giving it a go. This is 90's Capcom at their best.

Good stuff! I don't think I like it as much as I do Cadillacs & Dinosaurs or Final Fight, but it's a lot of the same goodness. The issue I think is that a lot of the enemies feel very samey, since most of the game's minions end up being Xenomorph variations. For that matter, two of the player characters being Predators is a cool idea, but they end up feeling pretty interchangeable on first blush (though I did end up favoring the Hunter, so maybe I just wasn't paying attention).

Capcom did a good job, though a lot of things I take for granted in Capcom arcade games feel wildly out of place here. Food pick-ups like blocks of cheese or turkey roasts, a martial artist samurai, banter amid the full party - all of this looks really silly when you're playing as a Predator. This isn't necessarily an objection, at least on my part. I'm sure a contingent of Alien and/or Predator fans object to this game implying you can beat a Xenomorph by slapping it hard enough. But hell, that's part of the fun.

Why is Dutch a cyborg now? Again, not a complaint, just wondering what happened to him.

I hadn't really had an itch for arcade games since I thought I couldn't play any of them. But then I say a video talking about this game and it looks so cool. The fact that the gameplay was similar to fighting game controls, the gorgeous spritework, and the pleasant looking character designs. I became so infatuated by this immediately and decide I wanted to play this game. After several tireless effort, I finally found a way to play this. Did it live hope to the greatness I felt when I first say this?

Well kinda...to be straight with you. I enjoyed the game as you can see. But some of the controls and movement are pretty rough imo. I know it's an old game and was not made with and Xbox controller in mind. So obviously, it's my privilege coming out a little when I say this. There's a few things I wish was a bit better though. Such as being able to running, block and/or dodge, choosing when to reload the gun, picking up weapon by accident not eating my inputs, and depth perception being a pain in my butt. A good chunk of my deaths would have been avoided has I had to ability to move fast enough or not forcefully stopped in my tracks.

Aside from all of that, I still had a blast playing through this. And I glad I actually was able to even play this in the first place. The music was great. The story was very miniscule but that was fine, I don't really know anything about this series so I would have been very confused had there been more. I do wish the game was a bit longer but I get why it wasn't. BTW I mostly played as Linn Kurosawa, she looks so cool so I had to try her out. Which isn't very surprising hearing as she influenced Lyn from Fire Emblem design. And she was very fun to play. I played a little of Predator Warrior and it was good. I might run it back with them at some point.

One day I want to play this on an actually arcade system. If those even exist anymore. I feel like I would enjoy it even more.

Whoa a AvP beat um up where I can play as the Predator and beat and blast the shit out of aliens with a decent combo system. I still have nightmares of AvP SNES but this one is a blessing. Always looked for it arcades but only caught it a couple of times. Cmon Capcom Rerelease this shit. Find a way.

Now after playing Alein vs Predator fully through an arcade machine, my appreciating for the title is just that much more. It does a decent job of respecting the IP while at the same time delivering an above average arcade beat um up. Attacks feel good when landing and you have quite the amount of moves at your disposal. It sometimes feels like you can combo enemies for day once you understand what your character can do. Adding street fighter style special moves also helps keep the gameplay fresh and rewarding a bit more than your typical button mashing brawler. AvP also has more enemy variety than I would have initially thoguht. More than just the regular enemy. Lots of different shapes and color vareties are on display. While being an arcade game the game doesn't feel as cheap or quater munchery as some of it's peers which contributes to how much fun it is to play. One of the better arcade beat um ups released in the 90's.

Not sure how I feel about this one yet, very intense and robust but it's very exhausting. Kinda Musou-like in its enemy patterns and density: It works for the Alien universe really well, but it's not a 'frightening' game in the first place, so it just leads to the game being very suffocating. Definitely the highest 'cool' factor of a Capcom brawler, and I love the moveset - hell, Linn Kurosawa is just one of Capcom's best character designs, period. But I think taken as-is, it's very messy and chaotic to its own detriment. Would need to play it again single-player and see if that effects enemy readability at all.

this is probably the best beat'n up made by Capcom I played thus far, the combat is great and satisfying, the hitstop effects, sounds and the general character's movesets are all great.

same goes to the presentation, great music and visuals but that is expected from Capcom at the time honestly.

overall an great game, it's an shame that this is still an Arcade exclusive and it never received any form of a re-release even to this day likely because of licensing issues, this is probably one of the best beat'n ups ever made and the fact that this remain only in one platform is criminal especially for people who can't acess emulation that easily.

what i liked :
+the artstyle is downright amazing, even the little characters are expressive and the cutscenes have some charm to them
+the characters are fun, there is a pseudo arnold that does a primal roar everytime he beats a level, he even does a tiger drop at the enemies. its great, i can see capcom didn't let go of their wrestling passion.

Overall this is a very enjoyable game but with some very quirks not regarding the game itself, this is a clear case of lack of preservation, mame emulation is hard so you rely on pre built emulators like fbneo who does a serviceable job, this was supposed to be on the newest capcom arcade collection but unfortunally it didn't made it, shame as i would love to pay real money to own this, i have all the collections, having it on one of those collections would mean saving myself the hassle of finding a mame rom that will actually work because ON GOD i tried absolutelly everything.
play it any way you can but beware that playing it is more of a challenge than the game itself

Fun to play for about 10 minutes. The sprites are gorgeous.

My hot take is that beat-em-ups are not "good games." That doesn't mean they're not fun -- they are! If you're in a dimly-lit room and there's pepperoni grease on your fingers and the bleeps and bloops of other arcade games fill the air around you and it's 1994, they are very, very fun.

But sitting alone in my living room in my 30s, playing this? Listening to its cacophonous blend of banging-on-the-keyboard synth ost and GO GO GO sirens and bullets and fists and sticks landing repeatedly on alien flesh, just glazed-eyed on the couch watching the chaos unfold on screen while I mash the face of my 8BitDo M30 until it feels like it's about to crumble in my hand? Not so much feelin' it.

Trust me: I was there in the 90's -- I played this game, once, then, and I found it to be magical. For about 10 minutes. With a buddy by my side, hooting and hollering.

Not everything ages well, not everything must be heaved exhaustedly into the future. I'm telling myself this. In retrospect I would've been glad to have that one, hazy recollection of playing AVP, remembering it feeling so special, looking incredible, and then letting it slowly sink into the dark sea of distant memory. After all -- I'd probably, mostly be remembering the good time I had hanging out with my friend.

It's no one's fault but my own that, instead, I decided to boot it up on the perfect CPS2 Mister core and give it a shot solo. (It's also entirely possible that I'm completely missing a wealth of mechanical depth and finesse -- it's not lost on me that I incessantly tout a similarly tossed-aside, arguably-misunderstood 90's graveyard of an arcade genre.)

It's hard to say whether I would enjoy this game any more if I played it with a friend now. I don't think so. I am, after all, a grown man and not a pizza-grease-finger-having boy; and if I'm going to still play arcade games for children, regardless of whether I'm accompanied or not, I want them to be fast and fun, and not interminable trudges through eye-catching but ultimately samey content.

AVP--in spite of it feeling so tantalizingly close to the former--is most certainly the latter.