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Last year, we reported on the news that video game journalist and all-round good egg Mike Diver was writing a book about all of the lovely video games the Aliens film series has inspired.
Fast forward to the present day, and said book – entitled Aliens: The Video Games (£23.99) – is edging ever closer to its August 2026 release date – so we felt it was the ideal time to corner Diver in a darkened room and quiz him about his latest tome.
Time Extension: What inspired you to create a book solely about the Alien video games?
Mike Diver: Over the years, I’ve written a few pieces on Alien series games to mark Alien Day – which is always April 26th, in honour of the importance of the moon LV-426 to the first two movies.
To go a bit further than a pure listicle, I was considering a deep dive into the games of Alien 3, since that movie (which I rate more highly than some) received four very different official tie-in titles – a high-paced action-platformer for Mega Drive (which was quite widely ported); a more methodical, almost-Metroidvania side-scroller for SNES; a top-down puzzler for Game Boy; and a brilliantly fun light-gun arcade game.
I looked into who I could interview for the piece, but then I sat on it a while, only to have one of those light-bulb moments where I realised: there’s a book in this. I pitched the book, it got commissioned, and here we are – a full document of all the official (and many unofficial) Alien series games, with new interviews running throughout.
It also helps that I’m very much into the Alien series too, beyond the video games, so writing this book was a lot of fun.
Why do you think this particular franchise has spawned so many classic games, when compared to other movie franchises from the same period?
I think there’s definitely some licensed game fatigue on show through the 1980s and ‘90s, and a lot of those movie tie-ins were made fast, to release around the time of the film they were supporting. The quicker you need to go, the more shortcuts you take, and the lower the quality control level drops.
Through researching this book and speaking to many people who worked on Alien-series games in the 1980s and ‘90s, what came through was how proud they were to be involved in them – many were fans of the movies, and didn’t want to produce something half-baked. There was also less pressure on 1984’s Alien – for ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC – to be rushed along, as the movie had already been out for a few years. “It was already a classic,” is what the game’s programmer, John Heap, told me for the book. Those who worked on it were already aware of its status, its acclaim, and that overall series reverence carries through into Probe Software working on Alien 3 and Alien Trilogy.
When the love for the source material is significant, that can lead to some pretty incredible adaptations. And when the game is just another job, made to fulfil an order via some license or other, and nobody on the team has any connection to the story they’re supposed to be telling, or the characters they’re meant to cast the player as – I think that’s when you get the weaker tie-in experiences.
What new information did the interviews you've conducted for this book reveal?
Hopefully quite a lot! Some of what I discussed with developers was known to me, but I wanted more details on it; but a lot I didn’t know about before this project.
For example, when you die in Alien 3 on SNES, you hear the “game over, man” sample – as spoken by Bill Paxton, as Hudson, in Aliens. But that was never cleared by Fox – those cheeky scamps at Probe sent one cartridge to them for approval, without the sample, and another to the manufacturers with it. When telling me about that, the game’s producer Tony Beckwith said that these days “you’d probably end up in a nasty lawsuit or something”, if you tried such a thing. And of course, he’s absolutely right.
That takes me to something else I learned during the making of this book – that Fox didn’t really exert all that much control over the games that were being made, through the 1980s and ‘90s. When I spoke to artist Missy Castro about Aliens Online, from 1998, she said that Fox “wasn’t involved at all”. It’s only when we get into the 21st century that we see Alien games start revealing that battle between creators and IP holders, with studios seeing what they can get away with before Fox turns around and says: absolutely not.
You've also delved into the world of fan-made Alien games - how are these unofficial projects carving out their own niche when compared to legally legit releases?
They’re generally a bit more experimental with their settings and characters – for example, Alien Girl, which is a modern game for ZX Spectrum, casts you as an alien-human hybrid (and not of the Ripley 8 variety), and is a really fast and testing puzzle experience. It’s a small game, the sort of thing that no license holder would go for. Aliens: NeoPlasma is a bit like the Mega Drive Alien 3, a side-on, action-packed blast which is again available for the Spectrum. A throwback, then, but a really fun one.
These games are aimed at a very small, very specialist audience – not really the kind of market that Disney is going to be interested in.
It would be remiss of us to end an interview without asking what your favourite Alien video games is, and why... so go ahead!
I can’t pick just one, as it all depends on the mood. If I have less than an hour to blast through something, start to finish, I love going back to Capcom’s Alien vs. Predator, which I have on the Capcom Home Arcade. It’s a game my kids really enjoy too, so we make the most of that plug-and-play two-player design.
On holiday a few years ago, I got very into Alien Isolation again on Switch, as that’s a terrific port, but as great as that game is, I’m not sure it's a personal favourite – just because I find it too tense to be enjoyable.
Alien 3 on Mega Drive is the first Alien/s game I remember playing, and I played it to death, learning the level layouts as best I could, so that’s a special one for me.
Aliens: Infestation, on DS, is great too – and my pick for the best Aliens game (assuming we’re saying Isolation is the best Alien game). It’s a shame that it’s rather trapped on its original hardware, as it relies so much on the dual-screen presentation – though WayForward’s Adam Tierney did tell me “never say never” regarding a future re-release. Cross your fingers, because if that game breaks DS containment, it’ll be a must-play wherever it ends up.
Aliens: The Video Games will be published by Pen & Sword Books in August.