Alien 3 for the Nintendo NES came out in 1992, published by LJN and developed by the team recorded here as Acclaim Studios London. It is a film licence released in the year of the film itself, exactly following the model of the time, in which a game was scheduled to sit on shop shelves while the posters were still up in cinemas.

Play runs from a side view and turns on exploring compartmented levels. You move through the corridors of a complex, look for the route onward and meet enemies that come at you from several directions. Objectives typically involve a time limit and a task to complete, so the game is less a left-to-right march than a search inside an enclosed space.

On the eight-bit NES that meant real constraints. The dark setting of the source film was hard to build on a console with a limited palette, so the game leans on silhouette and contrast rather than detail. 1992 was also late for the NES; much of the audience had already moved to sixteen-bit machines, and eight-bit versions of licences were being made for a shrinking market.

The record lists a single player, which was standard for licensed action of the period. The difficulty is steep even by the conventions of the time, when players were simply expected to repeat a stage many times before it gave way.

Among players of the eight-bit era, LJN earned a reputation as a company that bought licences in bulk and left the quality of individual games to its contractors. Results swung wildly, and its logo is still treated as a warning sign.

This entry appears on OldGame.cz with its release year, publisher, console and accompanying images.