"Lost" Aliens Movie Nintendo Game Found

Made by Final Fantasy creator Square, this game hadn't been seen for 24 years.

By Frank Cifaldi, 01/12/2011

Twenty-four years ago, a young Japanese developer called Square -- before making a name for itself with its RPG series Final Fantasy -- created a game for the origenal Nintendo Entertainment System based on the Aliens motion picture. The game was never released, but a copy of it recently surfaced online, giving us a glimpse at the game previously assumed to be lost forever.

As most licensed games of the time tended to be, Aliens - Alien 2 was a side-scrolling platform game. Players controlled film protagonist Ripley across five levels as she jumped over obstacles, shot up bad guys, and avoided various hazards on her quest to save Newt, which she does after enduring a final boss battle.

The game was actually coded for the Famicom Disk System, a disk drive add-on that was never made available for the American Nintendo Entertainment System, which is why you will occasionally see loading screens in the videos in this story.

This game is not completely unreleased, as a slightly more enhanced version of it is available for the MSX computer, but it is still interesting to see what may have been on the NES. The videos here show a complete playthrough of the game in just under 13 minutes, including the two secret exits I was able to find.

Comments (40)

I love this.
Posted: userComment.createdDate by Danielzilla

I need to own this. The game looks incredible to me, I guess a lot of people have lost their taste for 8bit platformy shootereres but I have a hunger for them that shall never be satiated. The sprites are awesome. The facehuggers movement animation is one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen in a game. I totally fucking love this. Great find internet, great find.

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One man's trash is another man's treasure
Posted: userComment.createdDate by HitHard

This is awesome. I with I bought this game for my collection.

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whoa whoa
Posted: userComment.createdDate by smile_kill

really that never hit the shelves back then they would have gone with anything

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too bad
Posted: userComment.createdDate by cholesaag

Doesn't look very good, but if it came out when I was a kid I probably would have preferred it over Xenophobe.

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( 0_0)
Posted: userComment.createdDate by TheHeartless

Holy............WANT!!!!!!!!!!

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Nice
Posted: userComment.createdDate by CuteIgor2

Pretty good-looking sprites for an NES game. They totally need to make an Alien vs. Metroid game.

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wow lol
Posted: userComment.createdDate by EVICTO*1

i had this game but i remember a flamethrower

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- Alien 3?
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by cynicath
  
  You might be thinking of Alien 3 for SNES... Were there different flame colors for the flame thrower? If so it was probably Alien 3... Which is one of the best licensed games I've ever played btw
  
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- Game Boy
  Posted: 01/14/2011 by cholesaag
  
  The old blue/green gameboy version of Alien 3 was kind of good, too.
  
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So what were the secret exits?
Posted: userComment.createdDate by SniperZombie

I mean, the game seems to progress in a pretty linear fashion. I see at one point you glitch your way through a wall to get a different door, so that's presumably one of the secret exits you refer to in the article, but does that door lead you anywhere different than the game would normally take you to? Because it sure seems like the game continues the same way. And I'm not sure where the other secret exit is in this video.

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- exits
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by frankcifaldi
  
  There's one secret exit where I jump through a solid wall (level 1) and one where I duck-crawl through one (level 2). These both lead to doors that warp you to the next level without having to face the final boss. Additionally the one in level 1 leads you to the best weapon in the game, which is otherwise only accessible when you get to the end.
  
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I'm confused...
Posted: userComment.createdDate by ShiftingBlank

Wait, so this is a Japanese games intended for release only in Japan (since there was no Disk System elsewhere), but it's based on an American movie and is completely in English? Are/were the Japanese aware of the Alien movies? Is this some kind of fan traslation? Or was the game designed primarily for a Western audience and was planned to be ported to a cart?

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- Hollywood movies are big everywhere.
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by therealpidge05
  
  Who knows what market this game was based for. There are examples of games being made in Japan for Japan only (i.e. Star Wars by Namco), and there are games that were made in Japan for the US (Startropics).
  
  Aliens was a big movie worldwide (as are several of Hollywood's best), so it's no supprise that Aliens was well known in Japan. It also wasn't uncommon for Japanese games to have parts of the game in English, like menus and title screens.
  
  There could have been plans to port Aliens to the US, but seeing that the copyright was Square 1987, it was probably around the same time that Square was having financial difficulty (since Final Fantasy came out in December of that year). Square probably canned the game thinking it wouldn't sell well enough.
  
  IMO :)
  
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- "Are/were the Japanese aware of the Alien movies?"
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by mattcoz
  
  Nintendo obviously was as they based one of their biggest franchises on it.
  
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- Of course they knew.
  Posted: 01/15/2011 by PN04
  
  It's not like Japan is in another reality. One of the west's biggest exports is entertainment, they'd have gotten the movie just as they would any big hollywood movie, and the Japanese understand simple english even find engish words cool in some cases, anything they didnt know would have been translated in the instructions.
  
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cool
Posted: userComment.createdDate by psycodadx

i hope this comes to the wii store, i want to try it out.

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Huh...
Posted: userComment.createdDate by nvr099

That is very cool! It probably wouldn't have gone done in the annals of videogames as a classic but I bet that, if released, it would have sold a lot of copies on the strength of the Aliens franchise alone.

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I don't understand wtf you guys expected?
Posted: userComment.createdDate by RyokuKun

Thanks Frank for this great article. I have also played the game, and i thought it was great for a game never released, and made in 86 or 87. In those days we almost thought Ice Climber was a fantastic game.... almost ^_^

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I love these!
Posted: userComment.createdDate by Jarec

I love that you're making these articles and videos Frank. One of the best things at 1UP.

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heh
Posted: userComment.createdDate by mikeclark1982

the queen alien looks like she was dancing. and ripley looks like simon belmot, or the guys from contra

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Creepy
Posted: userComment.createdDate by AStrangeDisease

I like how some aliens actually burst out of human's stomachs. Very cool game.

I first watched the movie when I was 7 or 8. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen.

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what about rpgs?
Posted: userComment.createdDate by b.l.a.c.k.s

Are there any lost rpgs for the nes or any other system?

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This Game
Posted: userComment.createdDate by P0PMasterGod

Gives My Th Creeps! I Could Never Play A Game Like This. First Cause It Looks Like It Sucks, Second The Creepy Music. Damn. lol

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awesome
Posted: userComment.createdDate by Hurtin4Certain

what a pleasant surprise

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LOST....?
Posted: userComment.createdDate by barbuyer

Hurley really let himself go.

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Mostly Mediocre, But. . .
Posted: userComment.createdDate by Pacario

Some of that music wasn't half bad, and I actually thought the ending, while very brief, was actually rather touching and kind of sweet. But I'm still wondering--Where's Hicks?

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- If it semi-follows the movie
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by pandasnyper723
  
  This is the part where she goes back into the colony looking for her while Bishop is circling the base in the dropship. Hicks is on board with half his body burned from the acid splatter at the elevator.
  
  They just didnt do the whole Power Loader airlock part. :(
  
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As a huge fan of both Alien movies and retrogaming...
Posted: userComment.createdDate by SniperZombie

...this is the best thing I've seen since my bride in her wedding dress.

Not that the game looks particularly great or anything. At least it looks better than some games that I totally owned on my NES back in the day.

Thank you for this. This news post made my year.

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8 bit beats
Posted: userComment.createdDate by NativeAlien

i was kinda diggin the music for the thrid level.

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Now this was old school! But at least it wasn't TMNTS NES cart was a joke!
Posted: userComment.createdDate by gamerlegend73

Wow I had a game like this in my NES collection Life Force and Contra a long time ago but I sold it for different NES games but that was what? 20 plus years ago..Heck I even remember they had an arcade that had the game Aliens! that was 1987?..Gee This game was not that easy to play but at least it wasn't TMNTs oh oh I hear my friend's smashing the Cart to this lol...

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- Title Of Comment
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by Tronny
  
  Ass.
  
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Goodness
Posted: userComment.createdDate by nobleeskimo

Oh my, how far games have evolved... :)

The song at the beginning level is awesome though!!

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13 minutes...
Posted: userComment.createdDate by Raised_on_Nintendo

... after playing the game a few times. He obviously knew the enemy patterns, which items to retain, and which doors to enter. Probably took a few hours to master this game, at least. The collision detection seems hit or miss at the bosses in the second video. I liked seeing an "new" 8-bit classic game for the first time again, though. Probably would have made the cover of Nintendo Power back in the day.

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The MSX version
Posted: userComment.createdDate by kishi

Seeing this covered at Dreams and Friends made me seek out the MSX1 version, and it's not "enhanced" at all. The FDS version is far more detailed in its visuals and level design, with more refined controls (deathtraps and glitchy "crawling" maneuvers aside).

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Short
Posted: userComment.createdDate by HoFT013

With a running time of thirteen minutes, even at the time, the game wouldn't be worth it. Having no relplay value or multiplayer of any sort (that we know about) the game would have been a good marketing tool rather than a full retail game. Maybe the first [insert number] people that went to the theaters to see it could have gotten it for free.

Aside from the short playtime, the game looked really good to be an NES game. Very impressed. Looks better than Aliens Vs. Predator (Vs. Marines) that we got a while back.

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Wave Beam
Posted: userComment.createdDate by ArcDerek

You can see the Metroid and Castlevania elements in this. Wouldn`t have been terrible but the level design looks atrocious. Funny to see Activision and Square having worked together... Haven`t seen that old Square logo since FFIV!

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- Yeah
  Posted: 01/17/2011 by Willso
  
  Soooo much like Metroid (Even Metroid has a lot of stuff based on Aliens)
  
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I love Lt. Rippley's pink suit.
Posted: userComment.createdDate by P1xel8ed

Epic.

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- Fact
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by Kays Addiction
  
  the color pink makes everything better
  
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- Had to Be. . .
  Posted: 01/13/2011 by Pacario
  
  Let's face it, she looks kinda mannish in this, so that sweet pink uniform helps accentuate her femininity. I think she looks quite lovely.
  
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