Alien's Rich Gaming History Can Fill An Entire Book

Welcome back to Remastered. I wanted to get a little more positive with this week’s newsletter by covering Aliens: The Video Games, a new book about the games connected to that iconic horror franchise, and the re-release of 70s-style Robot Anime Geppy-X.

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Every Part Of Gaming History Has a Story Worth Telling

Documenting the history of the video game industry is no small feat, as there are so many facets to cover. Entire books can be written about a single studio, like Jason Schreier’s excellent Blizzard Entertainment book Play Nice, and there are enough pre-iPhone mobile games to warrant an entire database. 

These efforts are preservation in their own ways, serving as captivating spotlights on niche parts of the industry that informed its evolution. Ahead of Aliens’ 40th anniversary on July 18, White Owl Books’ Aliens: The Video Games by author Mike Diver is the latest thing I’ve read that accomplished that.

This book documents every game related to the Alien, Predator, and Alien vs. Predator franchises that has ever been released and features comments from over 20 different interviews. For this week's newsletter, I interviewed Mike Diver via email after reading Aliens: The Video Games. I found that his work puts a spotlight on underdiscussed but important parts of game history and gives us a deeper appreciation for the people who make games.

Typically, a nostalgic pull inspires research into certain parts of gaming history. Mike Diver’s earliest memories of Alien video games don’t come from Alien: Isolation or games based on more popular films, but from the Sega Genesis and SNES tie-ins to a less widely beloved film. “Personally, I loved Alien 3 for both Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES as a kid, so those games do have a nostalgic pull to them,” Diver told me.

While he enjoyed those games, he hadn’t looked into their development history. As the introduction of Aliens: The Video Games explains, what started as research into Alien 3 games for a potential article spiraled into becoming an entire book. He interviewed more than 20 game developers who worked on those Aliens games over the years and comprehensively documented each one.

I knew little about this franchise’s retro games before reading this book, but came away with a better understanding of how they factored into the history of licensed games. “I really tried to dig into every title, however significant in the grander scheme of the series, to find something interesting,” Diver explained to me. Having read through the whole thing, the book does deliver on that.

I did not know there was an Atari 2600 Alien maze game that was apparently much better than the system's infamous Pac-Man port, or that Alien: Infestation for the Nintendo DS started live as a spin-off of Gearbox’s infamous Aliens: Colonial Marines. Diver also had a couple very specific Alien 3 game-related facts that he eagerly pointed out to me.

“I didn’t know that the Aliens sample in the SNES version of Alien 3 – Bill Paxton’s Hudson proclaiming ‘Game over, man’ when you die in the game – was never officially approved, and that the game’s makers, Probe Software, sent a cartridge to 20th Century Fox that didn’t feature the sample,” Diver recalled. “Definitely something that today’s game developers would never get away with.”

Nowadays, licensed games like Scott Pilgrim EX are of higher quality, and the IP holders are very involved with their creation. Most of the titles featured in this book are from an era when corporations like Fox didn’t particularly care about video games, and it was passion and love for the films that made some of these Aliens titles punch above their weight. Intentional or not, Aliens: The Video Games is a testament to how genuine fandom was often behind the creation of some of the best retro licensed games.

Being able to make connections like that is one of the reasons I love reading about the history of the video game medium, whether online or in book form. It’s also what inspired this newsletter, as I’m proud to share stories like how some KKND fans-turned-modders are now working on an official modern update for those cult classics. Every game or franchise is someone’s favorite and impacts the art we experience today in some manner.

Reading through Aliens: The Video Games, I felt like Diver also understood that. His response to a question about why he loves writing about the history of video games affirmed that:

“Gaming history is quite easy to follow as it’s such a new medium, really, and it’s so well documented – which makes writing books about it a lot easier than subjects where I’d lose myself in libraries for weeks at a time, just to find one piece of vital information to underpin a single chapter. I suppose the longer I’ve worked in games, the more I’ve seen ‘behind the curtain’, and some of the magic of these experiences is maybe a bit lost on me. But at the same time, I’ve developed such huge respect and admiration for the people who make these things…I suppose I interact with games in a more thoughtful way today than I did 15 years ago, because I’ve seen just what it takes to bring us these wonderful things.”

Aliens: The Video Games is currently available for pre-order through White Owl and Pen and Sword Books’ official website and other online book retailers. It’ll be released on August 30.

What's Old Is News

Agent 64 release date, Summer Games Done Quick, PS Plus games, and more

• Goldeneye 007-inspired shooter Agent 64: Spies Never Die got an August 11 release date.
• Summer Games Done Quick, a speedrunning event featuring many retro games, raised over $2.4 million for Doctors Without Borders last week. The organization then found itself in hot water when it partnered with the Saudi-owned SNK to host a Metal Slug series speedrunning event, only to cancel it midstream and apologize on BlueSky. 
• On August 20, an update for Super Bomberman Collection will add the Super Famicom version of Panic Bomber W.
• Bit Bot, the studio behind this year’s terrible Legacy of Kain: Ascendance, announced it is making a retro-inspired beat ‘em up based on Image Comics’ Final Boss. 
• Glen Schofield, a game developer famous for their work on Dead Space, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and more, announced his retirement on LinkedIn. 
• A Lego set based on the original Donkey Kong arcade game leaked. 
• Emberville got an October 27 Steam Early Access release date.
• Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced sold 2 million copies on the day it released, according to Ubisoft.
• League of Legends Classic will come to the popular MOBA as part of Patch 26.15 on July 29. It's a throwback to Season 3 of the game, which took place in 2012 and 2013.
• Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Indigo Prophecy come to PlayStation Plus Premium Classics’ catalog on July 21. The retro-inspired Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind and Snow Bros. Wonderful come to PS Plus Extra’s catalog on July 28.

I asked Mike Diver to recommend one Aliens-related game ahead of that movie’s anniversary this weekend, and he chose the aforementioned Aliens: Infestation:

“My favorite Aliens-inspired game is the DS title, Aliens: Infestation. Its story picks up from the end of the 1986 movie, but goes in a quite different direction to Colonial Marines (even though it began life as a companion game to Gearbox’s title). It’s a 2D Metroidvania-styled game with permadeath mechanics, really unique characters, some fun alien designs, and plenty of that dense and tense atmosphere to soak yourself in. It also has the best end-credits music of any game featured in the book. Treat yourself and look it up on YouTube.”

70s-style Robot Anime Geppy X: You probably haven’t heard of this game because it was a low-selling but cult-classic PS1 title. It earns that reputation by being an incredibly charming mecha shoot ‘em up with full anime cutscenes inspired by retro anime and the over-the-top toy commercials that would run during them. Now that Implicit Conversions has refined PS1 emulation on consoles, we’re seeing unexpected re-releases like this one.

Although I hadn’t heard about this game until a couple of weeks ago, it really charmed me.  Like Aliens: The Video Games, it’s an ultra-specific love letter to a subject its creator, Akira Yamato, was passionate about. “When I wrote the original proposal and scenario for Geppy-X, I filled it with everything I loved, every idea, every reference, every dream I wanted to see in a robot anime,” Yamato explained in a press release ahead of the game’s launch. 

While playing, that passion still oozes through, so 70s-style Robot Anime Geppy X still holds up today. Its $40 price tag is a bit steep unless you’re really into obscure retro games or old-school mecha anime, but I highly recommend checking out its free Nintendo Switch demo at the very least.

That’s all for Remastered this week! Subscribe for free so you don’t miss out on the next newsletter. If you are subscribed, consider supporting me on Ko-fi so I can dedicate more time and resources to this newsletter.