Alien retrospective

[Administrator]

There have been just four entries in the Alien franchise, not counting the incoherent fanwankery of Prometheus or the comic book nonsense of the Predator crossover movies. Of these, only one - James Cameron's excellent 1986 sequel Aliens - features an emphasis on gunplay and shooting.
Compare and contrast. There have been, by my reckoning and once again ignoring any Predator-related versus matches, around 18 games based on the Alien series. Of these, almost all feature lots of gunplay and shooting. Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines at least has an excuse, based as it is on Cameron's allegorical war movie. Alien 3, a movie which rather pointedly featured no guns whatsoever, spawned an arcade game simply called Alien 3: The Gun. Such is the one-track mind of the games industry.
It wasn't always this way though. Way back in 1984, Ridley Scott's original movie got a remarkably faithful adaptation for various 8-bit home computers. Taut and tense, it's best described as a survival horror strategy game, where you guide the various crew members of the Nostromo around the confines of the ship, trying to evade the vicious xenomorph prowling the corridors and ducts.
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