ALIEN 3 (SNES) - It's a Pixel THING

Alien 3, directed by David Fincher, was a good looking movie with a crappy story that didn’t do so well on the box office. As for the game based on the movie, it still is one of my best Alien based videogame of all time.

Developed by Probe Entertainment and released between the end of 1992 and the beginning of 1993 for a crap load of 8 and 16 bit systems, the one that really was worth playing was the Super Nintendo version.

The game wasn’t at all faithful to the movie. There were only 3 things that makes us remind Alien 3: the title, the intro scene and Ripley’s haircut. Everything else is different, like the fact of all the levels are filled with aliens – in the movie there was only one – and, as the game starts, we’re granted access to a flame thrower, pulse rifle and a grenade launcher – once again, in the movie, there were no fire arms of any kind whatsoever. So, I think that we can’t directly compare the action present on the game to the one we see in the movie. Besides these observations, the game plays freaking well and it’s an extremely good platformer!

With its dark environment, creepy soundtrack and the well-known motion tracker – that was also absent from the movie, the six action-packed levels of the Super Nintendo version features a well-structured mission based system with a series of goals to complete in each one. Computer terminals can be found within the hallways, which link up to a static list of tasks that must be completed to advance to the next section. These missions can be taken in any order and include rescuing prisoners, destroying eggs, repairing damaged pipes, welding doors shut, and picking up power packs from one room and taking them to a generator in another. These were the main differences to all other previously released versions of the game, where you only have to destroy all aliens, free all abducted Fiorina 161 convicts and head to the exit before time runs out. Other big advantage of the Super Nintendo port was that there was no time limit.

To conclude, Alien 3 on the Super Nintendo is a time killer of a game. You start playing it and, in an instant, four hours have passed without even notice! The extremely well drawn graphics and its awesome parallax scrooling, which produce a beautiful illusion of depth, keeps us focused and even absorbed by its awesome gameplay!

Try to play Alien 3 in complete darkness! You’ll be amazed!..

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