Saturday, October 27, 2012

"Alien3", 1992.

1992 was a year of numerous blockbuster (or at least, perceived-to-be-blockbuster) franchises hitting the theatres, many of which received numerous and disparate unrelated licensed video games on different platforms. This is one of four strains of Alien3 games, also ultimately ported to the Sega Master System and the Amiga (and... Commorore 64?!)
CAN YOU TAKE THE TERROR? SHE'S BACK!
FEEL THE SUSPENSE!
FEEL THE DANGER!
FEEL THE TERROR!
ALIEN 3
ON GENESIS AND GAME GEAR !
The Xenomorph are fast, spit acid and are right behind YOU! The motion tracker is your only warning. No time to think, no time to catch your breath... RUN!
Can't see very far ahead in these air ducts. Hard to breathe. Face-huggers can be anywhere. Must find a Queen Alien. The closer you get, the more Aliens you find... better not have them find you first!
Just keep telling yourself, "THIS ISN'T REALLY HAPPENING... IT'S ONLY A GAME.
The only Alien movie that really lent itself well to standard video game conversion was Aliens, and I suspect that licensors of Alien3 and Alien Resurrection really just used the license as an excuse to make the Aliens game they always wanted to -- motion tracker, face-huggers, air ducts... Alien3 does have an Alien Queen, but it's never hard to find. (You ask me, Konami's arcade Aliens game left no face unhugged. Maybe James Cameron should try making video games directly?) Alien3 was primarily a movie about weaponless humans being picked off, one by one, by a single biological killing machine. And yet ever since Space Invaders, killing aliens has been practically synonymous with video gaming! How do we reconcile these polar opposites? Well, the game is primarily concerned with rescuing Alien victims -- presumably prior to their faces being hugged.
The ad wants to stress the following qualities: TERROR, SUSPENSE (more associated with the first Alien film), DANGER, and TERROR, again! I believe that Xenomorph does pluralise with an S, and it's not entirely consistent with film canon to describe them as spitting acid. Mostly the ad copy tries to instill the sense of persecution an Alien's prey would feel, an interesting tack. And that's it for Alien 3! (Or is it?)

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