Konami was one of the major video game developers in the eighties and nineties, but a prosperity in amaranthines is usually backed by mediocre titles to fill up the roster. A workhorse in the case of Konami would possibly be seen as a runner in other circumstances, but that didn't prevent them from the occasional odd decision.
I mean, yeah, just as on other games like R-Type back in 1987, H.R.Giger's designs had a significant influence on Contra, so Konami probably liked Aliens, but licensing a movie four years after its release?
I admit, things had been going slower in the eighties. It took quite a while for motion pictures to be distributed internationally and availability of rental tapes was a snail operation. You then often had to wait more than a year until you could actually buy the VHS finally and catching something on TV took ages till it happened. The target group probably was just discovering the movies and meanwhile, the Alien franchise was kept alive in pop culture by the Dark Horse comic books.
One thing though caught my attention, as I was previously researching on Konami's 1992 X-Men Beat'em'up, that somehow was peculiar, too. Marvel had its ups and downs at the time and despite action figures have played a role in their survival, there firstly was a quite popular X-Men cartoon shortly after the brawler got released, though it had nothing in common with the game.
In fact, the brawler was based upon the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men that didn't convince enough with another baffling choice, the use of designs from a more successful X-Men era around 1980. Probably the writing wasn't the best either. But was it just a cheap license for Konami back then, or did they forecast the X-Men heralding a new era?
Filming for Alien³ finally started in January 1991, after several drafts had been pitched since 1987. Konami could have actually speculated on the revival and echo. If you experienced Batmania around 89/90, you knew movies could still have an impact of enormous proportions and it was then, when Konami's business with western licenses such as Turtles, Simpsons, G.I. Joe or Asterix flourished.
But why then was the game released a whole year before the new movie even was shot? Was there enough anticipation to be exploited before a possible Alien³ license game came out? Did Konami intend to apply for a follow up license or was that already gone to Probe for development of home versions? With Sega's rail shooter Alien³: The Gun hitting the arcades not earlier than 1993, there might have still been an open slot. I rarely have so many unanswered questions about a game.
But back to Aliens. After a few not so noteworthy adaptations on home computers, none other than Square had obtained an Aliens sublicense from Activision to program Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in 1987. So there was an actual Run and Gun game before, that kinda stayed true to the movie.
Well, you were clearing areas filled with roaming Facehuggers, Chestbursters and Warriors with the Queen as boss for each stage. Some victims had been woven in the background and some Xenomorph heads and bodies were attached to the walls.
Konami built upon that, loosely adapting the patterns with their formidably matching routines of corridors, shafts, sewers and the random elevator of course. Though digitized images from the movie set the mood as an intro, they supposedly didn't license the actor likenesses for Ripley (player 1) and Hicks (player 2).
We immediately notice one major difference to the Square version, as the characters don't jump, which is realistic, due to the large rifle, but plays counter intuitively within the genre. This sure is neither the next Contra nor your average brawler. You have one action button for a standing and another for a crouched shot.
As you need the hunkered position for the feebles, but will also hit most large critters with it, it is more likely you keep walking stages firing like an epileptic crab, which indeed plays as awkward as it sounds. Also for boss patterns it is therefore more relaxing to team up, just as games like Aliens are intended for.
Konami have made a few additions that I'd like to focus on following the exposition. Aliens was a change for the franchise as it wasn't suspenseful survival inspired by movies like The Thing From Another World, Forbidden World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space or Planet of the Vampires anymore. After we've seen the threat, the theme could easily be transferred into dark eighties action horror. A perfect scenario for a shooter.
But do you remember 1990? Things had been intense primary or neon colors back then, heavy metal has drifted away from being evil and most horror films were comedies. R-Rated movie franchises like Rambo or Robocop had branched out as cartoons aimed at children.
Kenner, known for their Star Wars toys, had already tried to follow the success with the Alien brand in 1979, though it remained a short-lived experiment due to massive resistance against those horror creatures. But we know today that in 1992, Aliens returned to become their next top seller for a couple of waves.
Remember I was mentioning that canceled X-Men show? Well, Kenner came up with the idea to promote their Alien toys as a multimedia brand named Operation: Aliens. Whilst few products got in circulation, the planned cartoon under the same moniker got dumped under mysterious circumstances.
You can speculate it had something to do with the wild production history of Alien³ the line was supposed to complement. Another reason might be Fox thought of the concept as too gruesome, especially after a renewed act for children's TV, that was affecting marketing strategies as well.
The fascinating point is, that we don't know the role Konami played between all that, as their Aliens game seemingly precedes that schedule by roughly two years.
Konami and Kenner, the latter then decided to still release the toys under the Aliens banner, had been facing the same problem: The Alien beastiary at the time was quite limited. So just as Kenner decided to imaginatively create Xenomorphs in motley images of the former lifeform they infested, Konami brought in new organism variants.
Though stage boss designs merged with video game tropes, especially other minions got mocked for their supposedly non-canonical appearance. I'd argue that ideas have been nicked from other Post-Alien media like Carpenter's The Thing, so that a spider, a gargoyle or a zombie can be seen as genre typical embellishment.
The more interesting question to me is, was it just Konami hitting Zeitgeist or was there an actual interaction between creators? Was the more colorful approach a well of ideas to Kenner in the end?
Despite the cinematic ending, Konami's Aliens is otherwise to me nothing but light entertainment within a genre I like and based on a franchise I love. It's good for half an hour of fun every other year, especially accompanied by a good friend.
In my opinion though you're lucky finding a machine based on the Japanese version, that compared to the US cabinet isn't only having the more accurate color palette, but also appears more balanced by omitting the unwieldy vertical vehicle passage.
If it wasn't for the franchise then that version would have to be compared to the contemporary Alien Storm, whose Shinobi inspired cross hairs passages might be from a more static position, but still turns out as the more dynamic (and playable) alternative.
Direct competition might just as well have been a reason Aliens hadn't been unleashed to the Mega Drive, though it could have been released for the SNES that first became available by the end of November 1990 in Japan. On the other hand, Konami had to prioritize their own franchises as well, starting with Gradius III, and as far as I remember Nintendo still limited releases to keep a higher level of quality either.
Based upon those factors Konami might have even decided to only license the movie rights for a one off not to be adapted on other platforms. Before mentioned X-Men is another one of those odd licenses maintaining exclusivity to the arcades, that got challenged by the increasing technical quality of home consoles of course.
On the other hand, Aliens isn't exactly the game I would have picked to be amongst the five or six titles I could afford in a year as a kid. Maybe it's just perfect the way it went. Between a few hidden gems and the classics available on numerous compilations anyway, we still need a couple of programs at recent arcades or video game museums, that we can enjoy without regrets about that we can't really take them home.
As most players will not rush through on a single credit at first try, but the motivation for constant replays isn't all that high in my opinion, Aliens might actually be one of the machines you could be able to quickly set a new high score at your local arcade. That's one more reason to waste some change on a not more than decent license game, whose selling points aren't too strong individually, but add up to compensate for its deficiencies.
I mean, yeah, just as on other games like R-Type back in 1987, H.R.Giger's designs had a significant influence on Contra, so Konami probably liked Aliens, but licensing a movie four years after its release?
I admit, things had been going slower in the eighties. It took quite a while for motion pictures to be distributed internationally and availability of rental tapes was a snail operation. You then often had to wait more than a year until you could actually buy the VHS finally and catching something on TV took ages till it happened. The target group probably was just discovering the movies and meanwhile, the Alien franchise was kept alive in pop culture by the Dark Horse comic books.
One thing though caught my attention, as I was previously researching on Konami's 1992 X-Men Beat'em'up, that somehow was peculiar, too. Marvel had its ups and downs at the time and despite action figures have played a role in their survival, there firstly was a quite popular X-Men cartoon shortly after the brawler got released, though it had nothing in common with the game.
In fact, the brawler was based upon the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men that didn't convince enough with another baffling choice, the use of designs from a more successful X-Men era around 1980. Probably the writing wasn't the best either. But was it just a cheap license for Konami back then, or did they forecast the X-Men heralding a new era?
Filming for Alien³ finally started in January 1991, after several drafts had been pitched since 1987. Konami could have actually speculated on the revival and echo. If you experienced Batmania around 89/90, you knew movies could still have an impact of enormous proportions and it was then, when Konami's business with western licenses such as Turtles, Simpsons, G.I. Joe or Asterix flourished.
But why then was the game released a whole year before the new movie even was shot? Was there enough anticipation to be exploited before a possible Alien³ license game came out? Did Konami intend to apply for a follow up license or was that already gone to Probe for development of home versions? With Sega's rail shooter Alien³: The Gun hitting the arcades not earlier than 1993, there might have still been an open slot. I rarely have so many unanswered questions about a game.
But back to Aliens. After a few not so noteworthy adaptations on home computers, none other than Square had obtained an Aliens sublicense from Activision to program Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in 1987. So there was an actual Run and Gun game before, that kinda stayed true to the movie.
Well, you were clearing areas filled with roaming Facehuggers, Chestbursters and Warriors with the Queen as boss for each stage. Some victims had been woven in the background and some Xenomorph heads and bodies were attached to the walls.
Konami built upon that, loosely adapting the patterns with their formidably matching routines of corridors, shafts, sewers and the random elevator of course. Though digitized images from the movie set the mood as an intro, they supposedly didn't license the actor likenesses for Ripley (player 1) and Hicks (player 2).
We immediately notice one major difference to the Square version, as the characters don't jump, which is realistic, due to the large rifle, but plays counter intuitively within the genre. This sure is neither the next Contra nor your average brawler. You have one action button for a standing and another for a crouched shot.
As you need the hunkered position for the feebles, but will also hit most large critters with it, it is more likely you keep walking stages firing like an epileptic crab, which indeed plays as awkward as it sounds. Also for boss patterns it is therefore more relaxing to team up, just as games like Aliens are intended for.
Konami have made a few additions that I'd like to focus on following the exposition. Aliens was a change for the franchise as it wasn't suspenseful survival inspired by movies like The Thing From Another World, Forbidden World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space or Planet of the Vampires anymore. After we've seen the threat, the theme could easily be transferred into dark eighties action horror. A perfect scenario for a shooter.
But do you remember 1990? Things had been intense primary or neon colors back then, heavy metal has drifted away from being evil and most horror films were comedies. R-Rated movie franchises like Rambo or Robocop had branched out as cartoons aimed at children.
Kenner, known for their Star Wars toys, had already tried to follow the success with the Alien brand in 1979, though it remained a short-lived experiment due to massive resistance against those horror creatures. But we know today that in 1992, Aliens returned to become their next top seller for a couple of waves.
Remember I was mentioning that canceled X-Men show? Well, Kenner came up with the idea to promote their Alien toys as a multimedia brand named Operation: Aliens. Whilst few products got in circulation, the planned cartoon under the same moniker got dumped under mysterious circumstances.
You can speculate it had something to do with the wild production history of Alien³ the line was supposed to complement. Another reason might be Fox thought of the concept as too gruesome, especially after a renewed act for children's TV, that was affecting marketing strategies as well.
The fascinating point is, that we don't know the role Konami played between all that, as their Aliens game seemingly precedes that schedule by roughly two years.
Konami and Kenner, the latter then decided to still release the toys under the Aliens banner, had been facing the same problem: The Alien beastiary at the time was quite limited. So just as Kenner decided to imaginatively create Xenomorphs in motley images of the former lifeform they infested, Konami brought in new organism variants.
Though stage boss designs merged with video game tropes, especially other minions got mocked for their supposedly non-canonical appearance. I'd argue that ideas have been nicked from other Post-Alien media like Carpenter's The Thing, so that a spider, a gargoyle or a zombie can be seen as genre typical embellishment.
The more interesting question to me is, was it just Konami hitting Zeitgeist or was there an actual interaction between creators? Was the more colorful approach a well of ideas to Kenner in the end?
Despite the cinematic ending, Konami's Aliens is otherwise to me nothing but light entertainment within a genre I like and based on a franchise I love. It's good for half an hour of fun every other year, especially accompanied by a good friend.
In my opinion though you're lucky finding a machine based on the Japanese version, that compared to the US cabinet isn't only having the more accurate color palette, but also appears more balanced by omitting the unwieldy vertical vehicle passage.
If it wasn't for the franchise then that version would have to be compared to the contemporary Alien Storm, whose Shinobi inspired cross hairs passages might be from a more static position, but still turns out as the more dynamic (and playable) alternative.
Direct competition might just as well have been a reason Aliens hadn't been unleashed to the Mega Drive, though it could have been released for the SNES that first became available by the end of November 1990 in Japan. On the other hand, Konami had to prioritize their own franchises as well, starting with Gradius III, and as far as I remember Nintendo still limited releases to keep a higher level of quality either.
Based upon those factors Konami might have even decided to only license the movie rights for a one off not to be adapted on other platforms. Before mentioned X-Men is another one of those odd licenses maintaining exclusivity to the arcades, that got challenged by the increasing technical quality of home consoles of course.
On the other hand, Aliens isn't exactly the game I would have picked to be amongst the five or six titles I could afford in a year as a kid. Maybe it's just perfect the way it went. Between a few hidden gems and the classics available on numerous compilations anyway, we still need a couple of programs at recent arcades or video game museums, that we can enjoy without regrets about that we can't really take them home.
As most players will not rush through on a single credit at first try, but the motivation for constant replays isn't all that high in my opinion, Aliens might actually be one of the machines you could be able to quickly set a new high score at your local arcade. That's one more reason to waste some change on a not more than decent license game, whose selling points aren't too strong individually, but add up to compensate for its deficiencies.