THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE ALIENS PUBLISHER Electric Dreams AUTHOR YEAR 1987 CATEGORY Arcade Adventure DESCRIPTION Aliens is a first person arcade game with a strategic element. CONTROLS Keyboard, Kempston, Cursor KEYS : Up } Down } Left } Cursor keys Right } Fire } Ripley R Gorman G Hicks H Bishop I Vasquez V Burke B INSTRUCTIONS Ripley returns to the Aliens' planet with a squad of crack Colonial Marines in order to find out what's happened to the colonists sent there. It's your task to control her and the squad to penetrate the Acheron base and rescue the survivors - if there are any... The action takes place in first-person perspective, with you seeing the view though the helmet camera of Ripley and the five Marines. You can move the sights of your Pulse Rifle to track the aliens or to turn around in the room - the camera follows the gunsight. As well as the main display, the console below displays the status of the six team members. This monitors the life status of the members - as they near exhaustion, the status bar flashes and if an Alien is in the room with them it changes colour. The number of the room occupied by that character is also given. In the centre of the console is the current character, with a bio-functions trace on the left and the remaining ammunition on the right. You can move around by using the doors - move the gunsight over the doorway and press fire to pass through. Rapid movement can be made by ordering the character to move up to nine room to the North, South, East or West. Drawing a map is obviously a good idea here! If an Alien comes out of hiding or enters the current room, a proximity alarm sounds a warning. You have only a few seconds to shoot the Alien before it makes a meal of your forehead... When this happens, the viewscreen dissolves into static as your character dies. If a team member is not under your direct control when he or she meets an Alien, he/she is captured by the Alien and impregnated - the status bar turns yellow. If the character is not rescued quickly, he/she will soon die as a chestburster hatches. Ultimately, in the depths of the base, you may meet the Alien Queen in her brood chamber. She will be well guarded... SEQUELS/PREQUELS There are quite a few Aliens games. There is Aline by Mindscape, which is a much more strategic affair, and there was also a US version of Aliens (this one being the superior UK version) which was a collection of sub-games. SCORES RECEIVED Crash : "It is just very compelling." RATING : 84% (CRASH #37, February 1987)