Alien 3

"The Xenomorph are fast, spit acid and are right behind YOU! Can't see very far ahead in these air ducts. Hard to breathe. Face huggers can be anywhere. Must find the Mother 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!"

Alien3 is a run and gun platformer loosely based on the movie of the same name. In the game you find yourself on the prison planet with all the prisoners captured. Your task is to rescue them all before the time runs out and chest bursters appear. In your way are the Aliens running about so it's time to go all space marine fully loaded up with grenades and frame thrower and hunt down and kill the aliens. The levels are split into three types, Mayhem, Mission and rescue. They are mostly the same but mayhem as more aliens to kill and rescue is focuses on more prisoners with few aliens. In each level you need to traverse the platforms, lifts and ladders to find all the prisoners before running to the exit all with the time limit. Along the way you will find ammo pickups and even some secret areas by running into the black. After every three stages you wil face a guardian. These can be annoying as they run and jump all over but you just need to fill it with grenades blowing it up before moving to the exit within the time limit.

The longplay is played on Hard difficulty with music. You can set how many lives you want at the start but note that each time you die you are sent back to the start of the level. The only difference I have noted on Hard vs normal is that you lose more energy when taking hits. The time limit is mostly the same as is the number of aliens and prisoners. The aliens are no harder to kill but your energy for the motion detector maybe less as its seems to go off more often. After game completion I show some levels using SFX before showing the out of time sequence and game over.

Amiga conversion based on the Mega-Drive game. Overall a good version but with some missteps that takes away some of the polish compared against the original release. For starters we are missing sound on the title screen but most annoyingly you have to choose between music and sfx. The music is well done and the limited sfx are nice enough but not having them together kills the immersion. Not having any music on the ending credits screen is a slap in the face. Even the C64 version had Music+Sfx. You can select one or two button fire mode with the second button remapping the Jump function from up. You still have to press Space though to change weapon and I think id had rather that be the second fire keeping up to jump. The gameplay is as you would expect, nothing lost there or though parallax scrolling in the background is absent.

00:00:00 Title Screen
00:00:40 Stage 1 - Mayhem
00:03:25 Stage 2 - Mission
00:07:20 Stage 3 - Mission
00:10:58 Level - Guardian
00:11:58 Stage 4 - Mayhem
00:15:48 Stage 5 - Mission
00:18:12 Stage 6 - Mayhem
00:22:50 Level - Guardian
00:24:50 Stage 7 - Mayhem
00:29:20 Stage 8 - Mission
00:34:00 Stage 9 - Rescue
00:38:12 Level - Guardian
00:40:08 Stage 10 - Mayhem
00:43:42 Stage 11 - Mission
00:47:34 Stage 12 - Mission
00:51:32 Level - Guardian
00:53:22 Stage 13 - Mayhem
00:56:55 Stage 14 - Rescue
00:59:12 Stage 15 - Mission
01:02:08 Level - Guardian
01:05:45 Ending / Credits
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01:09:09 Stage 1 - Mayhem (SFX)
01:12:00 Stage 2 - Mission (SFX)
01:16:00 Stage 3 - Mission (SFX)
01:20:02 Level - Guardian (SFX)
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01:21:08 Time runs out Ending
01:21:52 Lead up to Game Over