Monday, September 3, 2012

"Alien vs. Predator", SNES, 1993.

This is just about the only video game advertisement I ever saw in the pages of a Dark Horse comic book (which would typically only advertise -- other DH comics!), and for obvious reasons -- it's an extension of a mash-up first explored (in any depth) in their pages.

THE BATTLE TO SURVIVE

JUST GOT UGLY

Two titans of terror are about to square off in the more fearsome fighting the galaxy has ever seen!
As a Predator Warrior, you'll battle dozens of deadly, double-jawed Alien beasts bent on your annihilation. But you're ready. A cloaking device makes you instantly invisible. You're armed to the teeth with spears, lasers, wristblades and killer kickboxing maneuvers - Weapons you'll need to survive ten treacherous levels of claw-to-claw combat.
Overcome swarms of Alien drones, warriors, chestbursters, face-huggers and you still face your ultimate challenge: a monstrous battle with the Alien Queen! Alien vs Predator, now face to hideous face on the SNES, Game Boy and MS-DOS from Activision.
Activision may have overextended itself somewhat here; I can find no record of an MS-DOS port of this game existing (concurrent development for both platforms would have been rather unusual), while the Game Boy "version" is a separate but related game subtitled "The Last of his Clan". But the cover artwork is so good it was used for both games (and the ad for that matter: save your money, here's a picture of the box in which we sell the game! Plus -- some gooey Alien fluids.)
I love the Predator's claws, and this is the reason why -- in the later, PC AVP game, the Predator is able to use its forearm computer in order to switch weapons systems and even activate a mutually-assured-destruction tactical mini-nuke. You see it raise the keyboard before the player's "face" and type keystrokes in on the keys. And because the Predator has long claws emerging from its fingers, it is unable to type as a normal person would, on fingertips, but instead is consigned to a kind of typing on the fleshy finger pads similarly to the way a receptionist would if she had gone overboard on the fingernail extensions. Because Predator Warriors and Glam Receptionists would typically be located at such polar opposites of most spectrums, it's neat to find that here it just ticks over and they meet. On that later game I also wrote a piece on the Alien's "mouth-cam", years ago. And... well, I would say to what extent I digress, but surely you must expect that by now.

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