Retro Arcade #2: Alien vs Predator

After the success of both the Predator and Alien Franchises in the 80's fan-fic writers must have gone to town merging the two universes in action packed stories, however it wouldn't be until 2004 when we'd get an actual movie from the idea and in all honesty it was quite disappointing despite Lance Henriksen's stellar appearance.

In any case 11 years prior in 1993 Activision took that idea and released Alien vs Predator for the Super Nintendo. Judging by most reviews out there as well as GameFaqs.com's own ratings the SNES version blew chunks. Lousy gameplay, horrible controls, and pretty mediocre graphics made the game score a 3.3 out of 10 from the players, and only a marginally better 5 out of 10 from GameFaqs itself.

As 1994 rolls around Capcom gets the AvP license and releases one of the best AVP games out there to this date. However, there's very little information regarding this gem of a game out there for some unknown reason. I couldn't find an entry in Wikipedia save for the small mention in the AVP games listing page, and most sites have maybe one or 2 sentences about it. One really has to wonder why such a great game is overlooked in this manner.

This is Alien vs Predator for the Arcade

Of note is that the game title uses the singular "Alien" title rather than the plural Aliens of future games, comics, and even a movie..

AvP is a side-scrolling Beat'em Up. The cabinets, as far as I can tell from what little in formation I have found and what I remember from my local arcade, were either 2 player standard or 4 player extended with a standard control layout. Start button, Joystick and 3 action buttons to attack, jump, and shoot the secondary weapon.

You get a choice of 4 characters:

"Check the pecks" Though I'm sure Rob Liefeld had nothing to do with these designs.

Star of the first Predator movie: Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer, identified in the game only as "D. Schaefer" is Arnold himself in all his 16 bit digitalized glory. The character features a cybernetically enhanced behemoth of an arm with several built-in weapons. He's the strongest and, for that reason, slowest of the bunch. He can pick up large weapons such as pipes and the predator weapons and swing them around instead of throwing them. He also has a dashing headbutt instead of a regular jump.

Original Capcom creation Lt. Linn Kurosawa is the fastest, but the weakest of the group. She's also the most skilled fighter so while you won't be inflicting as much damage with her, she can dodge attacks, and deliver faster attacks than the rest. She has a fully automatic machine pistol, and a katana as her main weapons.

Original bad guy of the Predator movies, the Predator Hunter is unmasked in the character select screen, but is masked in the game. He is balanced overall, being quite strong and fast but not as skilled as his Predator brethren. He carries a double bladed staff, and the Predator's signature shoulder mounted plasma cannon.

Last but certainly not least the Predator Warrior. He has a silver Mask, and a slightly higher skill level than the Predator hunter. He carries a Predator Spear weapon; sharp and pointy at both ends but un-bladed. He also has the customary shoulder mounted plasma cannon. He appears masked in the selection screen as well as during gameplay. However upon beating a level boss, he'll remove the mask. .

Character Select Screen, with the cursor on the Predator Warrior

Once a character has been selected the game begins. You are dropped into the first street stage, and start killing aliens. The bloody nature of the game is immediately displayed as you decapitate and mutilate xenomorphs with your weapons. Green acidic blood is graphically shown spurting out of the severed sections. Awesome if you ask me.

The general game play has each character attack with their fists or specified melee weapon. Their secondary ranged gun/blaster is used as a support weapon and has a rechargeable power meter. Predator's shoulder blasters and Dutch's arm machine gun overheat and must be cooled off while Linn's machine pistol must be reloaded. Linn is vulnerable as she reloads her pistol, while the other 3 can attack while the weapon cools off.

Each character has a range of moves they perform, such as rising uppercuts, low dashes, and grabs and throws. They also have a crowd control move where they knock back and down enemies that are close to them. Predator Hunter has his blade discs spin around him, while Predator Warrior spins his staff above his head,. Dutch performs a spinning uppercut in the vein of Ken's Shin Ryu-Ken from the Street Fighter series, and Linn spin's around with her Katana pointing out creating an energy arc around her.

There are also a range of weapons you can pick up during game play to aid in battling the endless hordes of Xenomorphs (Aliens). Weapons you can pick up, include but are not limited to, knives, predator blade discs, pipes, hand grenades, machine guns of several types, flamethrowers etc... Picked up guns have limited ammo that once depleted will cause the character to drop the gun.

Dutch wielding the Predator's Bladed Staff

The game plays pretty linearly, but there's always so many things going on its never boring. There's also the benefit of numerous alien designs that you fight. Everything from the snake like chest-bursters, and spider like face-huggers all the way through to the queen and her guardian warriors. Each type of alien is a different design with varying colors and claws, blades, and other bony protrusions. In the course of the game you also get to fight other humans with guns, the very popular Power-Loader from Alien, as well as the Infectoids: human Zombie corpses. If you take too long to kill them while they are walking around, chest-bursters will explode form their chests killing them for you, however the chest-bursters tend to gang up on you and are hard to kill because they are very small, and its hard to aim at the ground. There's also an infected evil Predator you fight in one stage only.

The game also offers several types of health pickups in the form of food and soda cans. Everything from hot-dogs, salads, pizzas, to the ever popular roast turkeys and the very rare first aid kit which fills your health to 100%

The game is good length, and has a variety of stages to fight in. The addition of pickup weapons adds a new level of strategy to the fight though for the most points you'll want to kill the enemies with your melee weapons.

The story aspect is fairly decent. A city is overrun by Xenomorphs and Dutch and Lynn are trying to fight them off. Suddenly a pair of Predators show up to help them. They fight with the Predators until they locate the Queen's nest and destroy it. Upon destroying the nest, they come upon a group of marines and realize it was all caused by the Wayland Corporation. They were trying to create weapons using the aliens but they got out of control. Its nothing ground breaking but serves its purpose though the presence of the Predators isn't really explained.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, controls are very tight and responsive, and it lets you control the main characters just as you would expect too. The game gets pretty violent letting you decapitate aliens and zombie corpses left and right.

You can't tell but she's hot.

He's a Flasher!!!!

You're one ugly mother****er!

Geht to da choppah!

All in all the game is a really fun fast paced beat'em up / shoot' them up. Not too long, but not too short. It offers everything you would want from a AVP game with lots of alien death. If you can find this game in any shape I truly recommend you play it. Its great arcade game to pick up when you want to play a not too long but satisfying side-scroller.

Gamefaqs has it pegged at 9.0 by the players and 8.3 as their official score.. I'd have to give it at least an 8.5. Great game, great concept, great delivery from Capcom.