Continuing with our theme of Halloween Horror, this week’s column focuses on what, for most people, is the worst film in the quadrilogy. We can argue the merits and weaknesses of Fincher’s installment all day long, but if you’ve never seen the Assembly Cut, whatever opinions you have formed are wrong. But let’s save bickering about the movies for a different time–we’re talking about licensed properties here. There were no fewer than nine games based solely on the Alien 3 license (not counting Alien Trilogy because that’s a whole different animal), spanning platforms from the Commodore 64 to the arcade. And today, we’re looking at approximately all of them (seven out of nine’s not bad for a human) because no one man should play as many incarnations of Alien 3 as I have and hoard all that abject misery like some sci-fi Scrooge McDuck.

Alien 3 – NES: I could be a dick and end this entry by writing the letters ‘L’, ‘J’, and ‘N’, but that’s taking the lazy way out and I have a lot of space to fill with this column, so I’ll try and be a bit nicer to–nope, screw it, it’s a Nintendo game based on a film license published by LJN. Its only redeeming quality is the music from the title screen (which is quite catchy). Otherwise Alien 3 has no reason to exist on the NES. While it’s not quite as monumental a cock-up as many of LJN’s other releases (see: Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Back to the Future, and other ruined memories of your childhood), there’s no compelling reason for gamers to seek out this 8-bit version over any of the others unless you have one hand-me-down Nintendo console, a $2.00 gaming budget, and an inability to find a Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet hybrid cart at the local swap meet.

The main problem with Alien 3 on the NES is a difficulty level set to ‘ruinous’ from the get-go.  Alien 3 expects the player to deal with limited ammo for four different weapons, rescue anywhere between four and seven cocooned prisoners across eight massive, maze-like stages, kill four bosses in their own mini-stages between levels, and accomplish this with a timer set to anywhere from two to four-and-a-half minutes per stage.  It’s the ultimate in “memorize this or else” game play, and while this lends itself very well to watching experienced speed runners, its repetitive gameplay, time limits, and look-alike stages form a nightmarish combination for normal humans. Also, what’s up with that game over screen? What is Ripley reaching for there, Probe, the doorway to heaven?

Alien 3 – Master System: The Master System version of this game feels almost completely different from the NES version, despite both being 8-bit efforts doing roughly the same thing.  While the gameplay is identical in concept, the execution is handled better enough to make this version superior to its Nintendo rival. The stages feel smaller and more cramped, with much of this having to do with how the Master System handles the air ducts.  In other versions of the game, the air ducts are just there: you see them, you crawl inside, you navigate, and you exit somewhere else.  Not so with this version, where the ducts are separate areas from the main stage. Inside, your visibility is limited and areas of the map outside the ducts are blacked out. This plays havoc with navigation, as you can’t use landmarks from outside to jog your memory: you can emerge from a crawlspace only to realize you’ve gone down one level too far, have to turn around, and crawl right back in again. This is brilliant, and I wish other versions of the game had utilized this mechanic as it really ratchets up the tension without feeling artificial in its method.

Many of the critiques about the NES version with regards to gameplay and time limits stick to this one. Control on the NES version feels tighter, but I think the Master System’s music sounds better, and the afore-mentioned airduct changes are a nice touch. It’s also got entirely different stage map layouts and different numbers of prisoners to rescue, so it’s not the same game just ported over. It’s not the worst licensed 8-bit title by a long shot, but all the better options out there leave no reason to seek this one out unless you’re a Master System completionist, an 8-bit aficionado, or a die-hard Alien 3 junkie.

Alien 3 – Game Boy: One of the few games on this list not developed by Probe, which makes it a completely different animal from the rest.  While it still commits the cardinal sin of pitting Ripley against a whole legion of xenomorphs, it has the courtesy to give us a completely different spin from Probe’s designs, one that would have been incredible to see on the 16-bit systems.  Alien 3 on the Game Boy is an adventure title complete with puzzle solving and dialog screens to move the story forward. The only major stumbling block is the graphics, which reduce Ripley and the rest of Fury 161 to what look like black-suited extras from the set of Tron: Legacy.

Bits Studio’s take on this license is also unique for how it presents the action. While every other version on this list drops Ripley right into the fight with flamethrowers, grenades, and other goodies, on the Game Boy you start empty-handed.  Even better: the prisoners are walking around, doing their own thing, and there’s nary a xenomorph in sight.  Starting a game without enemies on the map might sound like suicide, but here it works perfectly, especially if you’ve played other versions of this game and expect to start blasting from the get-go.  You’re still limited on ammo (although the game gives you a cattle prod just in case things get desperate), and the music is more repetitive than a politician on the campaign trail, but it’s not the blast-fest you expect until the end of the game. Because of these differences, I find this version of Alien 3 to be the most enjoyable adaptation of this license, a welcome breath of fresh air from the rest of the lot. Not the best game of the bunch, mind you, but definitely the most enjoyable, and well worth the couple dollars it will cost you to pick up a copy nowadays.

Alien 3 – Game Gear: Having played the Game Boy edition, I had high hopes for the Game Gear incarnation until I saw it too was developed by Probe, and my fears were confirmed: this is the Master System version redux. Given the Game Gear is basically a portable Master System, this isn’t exactly surprising, but it’s still a missed opportunity when you consider this could have been the Game Boy version with better graphics and in color.

There are some minor differences here and there, but there’s really nothing more to say about it than this. A pity for the wasted potential.

Alien 3: The Gun – Arcade: Sega’s arcade division had a thing in the 90s with turning every property they could get their hands on into some kind of light gun game (see also: Jurassic Park, The Lost World, etc…). They did this with good reason, of course: light gun games are one of the few arcade experiences you just couldn’t duplicate very well at home thanks to custom hardware. This resulted in some fun games, but required Dhalsim-levels of yoga bendy-twisty to justify the plot changes to the stories. Alien 3: The Gun is no exception to this rule.

The only arcade use of the Alien 3 license  casts the player(s) as members of the Colonial Marines, and treats the film storyline the way babies treat diapers, by crapping all over it until what’s left is an unrecognizable mess. There’s more spent brass in this edition of the game than every home version of Alien 3 put together, a feat which you will find impressive if you’ve been paying attention to anything I’ve written so far. To that end, you get a planet-load of xenos in various forms to blow away, a nice sturdy gun with vibration built into the cabinet, featuring your standard over-and-under grenade launcher system for when you absolutely, positively must kill every ugly muthalover in the room. The last time Marines had access to this much firepower, the US military raised a flag over Iwo Jima. And just in case you get sick of creaming aliens by the egg-load, the game introduces other, more human bad guys for you to shoot in the later levels.

Sadly for Sega, this game has aged about as well as Revolution X. The sprite-based graphics produce nice visuals from far away but transform into pixelated garbage up close. The sound effects are grating, especially when your bullets go pinging off one of the many metallic surfaces to be found in the background. And the afore-mentioned “story” only works if you understand this was an excuse to put the Alien 3 logo on an arcade cabinet and charge people double the normal number of tokens. MAME supports this game if you’re just dying to see what the lack of fuss was all about, but don’t say I didn’t warn you: it’s the gaming equivalent of junk food–fun at the time, but you’ll forget all about it once you’ve punched your initials on the scoreboard.  For some extra hilarity, read the mangled Engrish accompanying all the scientific-looking shots of the egg, facehugger, “dogburster” and alien growth stages during the attract mode. My personal favorite, regarding the alien’s tail: “It used in attack action such as cutting or stab.”

Alien 3 – Genesis/Megadrive: I saved the 16-bit titles for last, because these are likely the ones you’re most familiar with. Alien 3 on the Genesis is almost exactly like the 8-bit versions, just with better music and graphics. Ripley looks like herself instead of a random, green-garbed bald dude, and the backgrounds are far superior, with parallax scrolling and animations throughout. The cramped airduct system from the Master System shows up here as well, though without the line-of-sight effects used in the 8-bit version. Better controls more than make up for this minor shortcoming.

The Genesis incarnation is a very competent platformer. It’s still very difficult, especially when set to Hard mode, but like most of the other versions, Ripley’s a gun-toting Colonial Marine wannabe with multiple options for reducing her enemies to a thick yellow-green spray. Climb the ladder, rescue the prisoner, shoot the xenomorph…lather, rinse, repeat. Fine for what it is, and better than most licensed games for sure, but still feels like a missed opportunity here.

Alien 3 – SNES: This version, published by Acclaim, is obviously the game Probe wanted to make in the first place. Released a year after its Genesis/Megadrive counterpart, it’s clear Probe took its time crafting this sucker to look, sound and play awesome. The main goal of rescuing trapped prisoners still exists, but to this have been added a slew of side-quests. These send Ripley to every corner of the facility to repair broken pipes, retrieve hardware, wipe out colonies of the creatures, seal off corridors, repair junction boxes, and kill alien Queens. Yes, this is still aping Aliens far more than it should, but if you’re going to deviate from the licensed story, you might as well go balls-to-the-wall.

While I still honestly enjoyed the Game Boy version’s take over the Super Nintendo’s, it’s obvious Probe wanted to create more than just a 2D blast-fest, and given the extra development time, they did just that.  From the extended opening sequence which heavily mimics the film to the great use of the hardware’s scaling and transparency effects to the badass cinematic ending, it’s damn near everything you’d want in a licensed game. If you’re limited to one incarnation of this title, make sure this is the one you’re nabbing off eBay.

In my living room, everyone can hear me scream.

The worst sin committed by most of these games is the failure to use the movie’s storyline to its fullest extent. One might have remembered that Ripley and her new-found friends from general population don’t have access to heavy weaponry.  “This is a prison,” Superintendent Andrews explains in the film, “it’s not a good idea to allow prisoners access to firearms.”  When asked what they could use for defense, she gets told about carving knives and fire axes, not pulse rifles and hand grenades (one poor sod equips himself with a pair of freaking scissors, because hello, desperation). There’s only one Alien running around, not a whole horde. And the game developers mostly fail to remember the best scenes from the film are those involving the humans trying to herd the Alien into a particular area, a concept that could have proven itself fresh twenty years ago.  Instead we’re treated to another run-and-gun platformer where it feels like the devs wanted to make a game based on Aliens despite missing that boat by a good five years and settled for the next in line.

I have two other problems with the games based on this license though. First: discarding the Alien’s acid-for-blood mechanic. While I get this would be difficult to implement given the 2D side-scrolling mechanic used by most of these games, why leave out such a massively important part of the xenomorph’s xenobiology? It would be like making a Star Trek game where the Enterprise didn’t have a Transporter Room. Yes, the SNES version has the whole ‘acid puddle’ and ‘dripping acid’ traps, but this isn’t the same as standing beside a xeno, unloading your pulse rifle into it, and suffering splash damage. Boo on all involved for leaving this out.

Second, and nearly unforgivable in my mind, was the developers’ decisions to go with happier, more up-beat endings. Apologies in advance for spoiling a film released twenty-two years ago, but Ripley dies at the end. Yet every video game version of Alien 3 (save for the SNES incarnation, and Alien 3: The Gun where you aren’t playing as Ripley) has her escape from Fury-161, and in some cases just leaving the rest of the prisoners to their presumed deaths at the hands of surviving xenos–looking at you here, Game Boy version. I don’t care what you think of the film, but as dark as this kind of ending is, you have to concede it’s completely out of character for someone who has spent the last several hours of her time making sure her fellow inmates don’t die of involuntary xeno-induced chest inversions.

“THIS…IS…FURY 161!!”

But you know what? All in all, the Alien 3 games could have been much, much worse. That in and of itself should be enough to satisfy me. It’s not, because I’m one nitpicky bastard of a retro gamer, but you don’t have to hold that against them if you don’t want to. With that in mind, we’ve got our usual assortment of retro ad goodies all ready just to say thanks for reading the last twenty-five hundred words:

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)