How to play Alien online
- Move through the corridors: arrow keys
- Fire the flame thrower: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose a game level: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Random or fixed alien movement: F4 (left difficulty switch)
- Pulsars on or off: F9 (right difficulty switch)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
You control a human crew member running through the hallways of a spaceship. The corridors are lined with alien eggs, and your job is to crush every one of them by running over them. Three adult aliens roam the maze at the same time. If one catches you, you lose a human, and the game ends when you have none left. Openings at the sides of the maze work as hyperwarp passages that take you to the opposite edge of the screen.
You have two ways to fight back. Each maze holds three pulsars. Grab one and the aliens turn blue and weak for a short time, so you can destroy them by touching them. Each human also carries a flame thrower with four seconds of flame in total. A burst makes the aliens turn away or freeze for a moment, but it does not work at the edges of the screen. Two prizes also appear in each maze for extra points.
Clear all the eggs and you move on to a bonus round. Here you have eight seconds to run straight up to the top of the screen and grab the prize waiting there. Getting caught in the bonus round does not cost you a life.
Levels and difficulty switches
The manual describes four levels. Level 1 is the normal game with three humans. Level 2 is harder, with only two humans and no bonus humans. Level 3 is an expert game, and Level 4 is a practice game that starts you with six humans. The left difficulty switch decides whether the aliens move in fixed patterns (B) or randomly (A). The right switch decides whether pulsars weaken the aliens as usual (B) or have no effect at all (A).
Tips
- Learn the fixed patterns first. With the left switch in B, the aliens follow set routes, which makes it much easier to plan a path through the eggs.
- Save pulsars for crowded moments. Eat one when aliens are close by, so you can catch them while they are still blue.
- The flame is limited. Four seconds per human goes fast. Use short bursts when an alien blocks a dead end, and remember it will not help you at the screen edges.
History
Fox set up its game division in 1982, as part of a wave of film tie-in games that followed the success of The Empire Strikes Back on the 2600. Neubauer worked for it as an independent contractor. He is better known for the Atari 8-bit classic Star Raiders and later wrote Solaris for the 2600. Reviewers at the time found Alien too close to the many “eat the dots” maze games on the market. Later writers were kinder: Brett Weiss called it one of the best movie-based games on the 2600, even though it borrows from Pac-Man and Freeway. Fox Video Games closed in 1983 during the video game crash.
Similar games to play next
- Pac-Man – the maze game that Alien is built around
- Ms. Pac-Man – a much closer conversion of the arcade maze formula
- Lock ‘n’ Chase – a maze game with a burglar, police and doors you can close
- Mouse Trap – another maze chase, where you escape cats by switching doors
- Solaris – Doug Neubauer’s later space shooter for the 2600