Alien

After clearing a maze of its eggs, the players have a bonus round where they must reach the top of the screen to collect a prize. Along with Mega Force and M*A*S*H, Alien was programmed by Doug Neubauer and among the many film tie-in video games made for 20th Century Fox's video game division, Fox Video Games. It was one of the first transmedial works in the Alien franchise since the release of the film. Reviews from The Video Game Update and IGN found the game to be derivative of other earlier games like Pac-Man (1980). Other reviewers commented on the graphics finding that Xenomorphs either resembles venus fly traps or came off as cute. Journalist Robin Sloan summarized that neither Alien (1982) or many of the other video games in the Alien franchise were as influential as the films were for other later video games.

• Title — Alien • Developer — Fox Video Games • Publisher — Fox Video Games • Designer — Doug Neubauer • Series — Alien • Platforms — Atari 2600 • Released — November 1982 • Genre — Maze • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — Gameplay footage Alien. This footage shows the gameplay of stomping eggs in the maze, followed by a completion of the bonus round. The goal of Alien is to move your human character through the hallways of the space ship and crush all the alien eggs which have been placed there by interacting with them. The goal is crush all the eggs, and collect items for points. If an alien interacts with the player, they lose a life. The game ends when the player runs out of lives. The player must avoid or destroy any adult aliens who also move through the halls. The aliens can be halted briefly in their path by hitting them with a flamethrower, which can only be used once per life. Scattered through the maze are pulsars. When the player interacts with them, the aliens turn blue and become vulnerable to the touch of the human character. Alien uses the difficulty switches on the Atari 2600 console which adjusts the game difficulty. This includes whether the pulsars make the aliens turn blue or not, and changing the movement of the aliens from random to a fixed pattern. Once all the alien eggs are destroyed, the player enters a bonus round where they have eight seconds to move to the top of the screen and grab the prize shown there. The player does not lose a life if hit in this round.

Tony Cohen of Video Games Player magazine said that in 1981, there were nearly no video games release that were based on films. He said that following the financial success of video games based on films like Parker Brothers' Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1982) and General Consumer Electronics's Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1982), there was a rush for video game companies to "snatch up the rights to every hit movie ever made." 20th Century Fox formed Fox Video Games Inc. in April 1982 to produce video games for the Atari Video Computer System. Fox Video Games released eight video games between 1982 and 1983 for the system which were film tie-ins. The first film tie-in planned by Fox Video Games, was a video game version of Megaforce (1982). The development and distribution of the game left it to only be re-scheduled for release in 1983. Frank O'Connel of Fox Video Game described Atari 2600 hardware as being "restrictive" leading to the company to initially rely on the programmers to also act as the game designer. He said that about 80% of all the software Fox Video Games develop was based on licensed properties, and about half of its products being made outside the company. Doug Neubauer worked as an independent contractor making film tie-in games for 20th Century Fox's new game division making games based on films including Alien. Neubauer had hoped that making several video game adaptations would lead to making a film license like Star Wars, finding that "just because a company makes a movie doesn't mean they have the rights to make a video of the movie, case in point, Star Wars. They didn't have the rights to it."

Doug Neubauer would also make other titles for Fox Video Games such as Mega Force and M*A*S*H (1983). Fox Video Games closed the year after Alien was released due to event surrounding the video game crash of 1983. Neubauer made some more games for the Atari 2600 towards the late 1980s until leaving the video game industry. Along with a novelization of the film and the next Alien game, Alien (1984) for Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computers, Neubauer's game was one of the first follow-ups from 20th Century Fox that directly borrow plot elements from the original film in the Alien franchise. Robin Sloan, writing for the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, said that neither Fox Video Game's Alien nor other Alien video games such as Activision's Aliens: The Computer Game (1986) or Probe Software's Alien 3 (1992) had as strong as influence on video games as the Alien film series. He described that first Alien film as influencing titles like Nintendo's Metroid (1986), while Aliens (1986) use of mobile gun turrets, secondary fire options, and motion trackers could be seen in the various action games that followed the films release.