Page 24 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #2
P. 24
By Kyle Snyder verse direction, or in some rare
B seconds. One can see how this
cases, stop moving for several
would be advantageous.
eing a fan of horror and
Next, the prizes are not cute
sci-fi, I remember being
rather excited to see a video game For the Atari 2600 little cherries and strawberries but
version of the claustrophobic cine- astronomical shapes like rockets,
matic masterpiece, Alien. space ships, and Saturns. (The
It must be a fantastic and fre- when caught and destroyed. Aliens planet, not the car!)
netic shoot-em-up, I thought. that are destroyed are soon regen- Finally, we come to the bonus
Probably one of those three- erated round.
and
dimensional type games like CBS' The bo-
Tunnel Runner or Starpath's Es- wander nus
cape from the Mindmaster. Only a back round is
into
game of that style could hope to much
capture such a great film experi- play like Ac-
ence. from the tivison's
Plug in the cartridge and you same Free-
get. . . PAC-MAN ?!?!?!?!? door at way,
the bot-
Yes, the programmers at 20th with
Century Fox wanted their own tom of much
piece of the maze game pie, so the less
screen.
they created what turned out to be margin
ALIEN: A Pac Man type game that Periodi- for er-
was better than Atari's own li- cally, ror. You
censed version of the arcade clas- bonus move the human straight up the
sic. And in an effort, no doubt to prizes appear in the center of the center of the screen (you don't
maze and are worth extra points
stave off the lawsuit hungry law- even have the option of
yers at Atari, several essences of when snagged. Finally, a secret moving left to right) through a
game play have been tweaked, tunnel on either side of the screen stampeding "herd" of aliens. The
allows both human and aliens to
and a bizarre bonus round keeps goal at the top of the screen is a
this from being an outright clone. leave one side of the maze and bonus prize. Grab it within eight
The player controls a person emerge on the other. Sounds just seconds and you win the points.
(Lt. Ripley?) running through the like a re-write of Pac Man, right? Run out of time or get munched by
maze-like corridors of the space- Well, those are the similarities. The an alien and you return to the maze
differences are what make the
ship Nostromo, crushing alien eggs screen. You don't lose a human if
for points. One by one, Aliens game noteworthy. you die on the bonus round, you
emerge from a door at the bottom First, the sparkling stars just return a little humbled, per-
(energizers) appear only ONE AT
of the screen (up to three per haps.
maze) A TIME. This makes for more stra- It's interesting that certain
to pur- tegic game touches are so much closer to their
sue the play and arcade inspiration than Atari's ver-
hap- discour- sion. For instance, the color of the
ages run-
less maze walls are blue, just like the
hu- ning for a arcade Pac Man. The sound of the
man. quick power egg crushing is VERY CLOSE to
up. Second,
The the original dot munching sound
human the player effect and the background siren is
can has a present, as well.
grab WEAPON. The ads for this cartridge pro-
spar- Pressing vided a take off on the original
the fire but-
kling movie's tag line, "In your living
stars to ton causes room, no one can hear you
tempo- a flame scream." But when I play Alien, I
thrower,
rarily turn the tables on find a good solid challenge, clever
the aliens, at which “Feed Me!” YES, A FLAME graphics, and excellent sound. In
point they turn blue and flee and THROWER, to activate in short, a screaming good
are worth increasingly higher points front of the player. When the flame time!
thrower is activated, the aliens re-
CGM
Classic Gamer Magazine Winter 2000 24
