Alien 3 is a side-scrolling platform shooter based on the 1992 film of the same name. The game was released for the Sega Genesis and Amiga in 1992. Additional versions were released in 1993, for the Commodore 64, Game Boy, Game Gear, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and Master System.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY The main hero of the game is the beautiful and "redneck" Lt Ellen Ripley (played in the movie by Sigourney Weaver). Ripley wakes up after being forced into cryo-sleep, at a scientific base situated in Sulaco. Two alien monsters have stowed away, so the nightmare is still on. Lt Ripley must fight through to extinct the menacing breed once and for all and save the humans that are kept hostages by the Aliens for experimental purposes. Ripley must find ways to free the hostages and she also has to conserve her ammunition since there will be many times where you'll be left with no bullets at all (an issue that will make things even tougher). In terms of gameplay, Alien 3 is quite hard since the aliens move pretty fast and spawn in a way that sometimes you just can't react quickly, so you need to be careful in every corner. But though this game is sometimes frustrating, it still is one of the best 2D action games for all the 16bits consoles and the Amiga home computers.
GRAPHICS / SOUND Alien 3 is a decent action game with platform and shooting elements. The Sega Megadrive version offers good graphics with some dozens of colors on-screen and smooth animation. The game also features digitized sound FX and a quite atmospheric, electro-style music score.
CPU: Motorola 68000 at 7.16 MHz in PAL, 7.67 MHz in NTSC / Secondary Zilog Z80 at 3.55 MHz in PAL, 3.58 MHz in NTSC MEMORY: Main: 64Kb RAM + 8Kb / Video RAM: 64Kb / Audio RAM 8Kb GRAPHICS: VDP Chip: 256x224, 320x224, 256x240, 320x240 / 512 colors (1536 using shadow-highlight mode),64 x 9-bit words of color RAM, 4 lines of 15 colors plus transparent, allowing 61 on-screen colors / Sprites: Up to 64 on-screen, 16/20 per line, 256/320 pixels per line, per-sprite priority / Interlace Mode 1 (no increase in resolution and Mode 2 (2x vertical resolution) SOUND: Main: Yamaha YM2612 @ 7,16MHz with six FM channels, four operators each / Secondary: TI SN76489 with 4-channel PSG + 3 Sq Wave channels.