The Alien Game Franchise

The Alien game franchise is one of the most successful and most recognisable of all time. The 1979 film, Alien, started the ball rolling and three years later the first Alien video game was released. Since 1982 there have been a further 20+ games to hit the market in various formats, from video and mobile games to arcades games and slots. It’s a franchise that has continued to go from strength to strength since first hitting the market and it’s still hugely popular to this day.

The first instalment of the game franchise was met with a poor reception after Atari were tasked with bringing the Alien film to life in video game format. However, things didn’t really go to plan and their Pacman styled game just didn’t live up to expectations. Amsoft were the next to try a couple of years later with their game entitled, Alien. Again, fans were left hugely disappointed by what was produced and the game just felt outdated in terms of graphics and gameplay.

It was the collaboration from Activision and Mr Micro who produced Aliens: The Computer Game where things started to look promising for the franchise. It was the first time that the graphics were appealing and it was a first person shooter too, with a great soundtrack. After this step in the right direction, it was time for the franchise to hit the arcades and it did so brilliantly thanks to Konami. Aliens is still to this day one of the best franchise games and it was superb on the arcade circuit.

It wasn’t until 1992 that the Alien franchise was picked up by key players in the video games market. Nintendo and Sega played home to Alien 3 and it will go down in the memory as one of the hardest games of all time, with many people failing to complete it. This caused a negative reaction not just from players but from critics too. Alien 3 was also ported into a Gameboy game but this wasn’t a great adaptation.

When Alien 3 was made into an arcade game, where players could work together in a co-op mode while shooting Sega Light guns, it brought the game back to life once again. Alien 3: The Gun wasn’t really based on the film, but it was an enjoyable game in its own right. Next up was Alien: A Comic Book Adventure, which was well received, before Alien Trilogy made its way onto the PlayStation and Sega Saturn as well as the PC. Alien Trilogy still to this day is arguably the best Alien game of all time.

Since Alien Trilogy, there has been some good entries into the Alien franchise. Aliens online had potential but flopped, Aliens Unleashed on mobile was pretty good for a first foray into the market and offered something different to the common mobile games already on the market. Aliens: Extermination was the first Alien game to make it into arcades since 1993 and again it proved a great success, especially with a great two player experience.

It took until 2011 for a good port on a handheld console. The Nintendo DS played home to Aliens infestation and it was an extremely impressive game that offered something different to the modern games. If you died, you were dead. It made the game more gripping and intense. Since then there has been Aliens: Colonial Marines and Alien Isolation on console and Aliens: Armageddon as an arcade game sandwiched between them.

By and large the positives have outweighed the negatives with many of the games being real hits, especially Alien Trilogy and the arcade games. It’s this success that has led to the development of online slot games such as NetEnt’s Aliens with slot sites like partycasino getting in on the action. The 15 pay line slot is extremely popular and it is heavily based on the original movie.