Amiga Power summed Alien Breed up in its opening line: “Take the basic idea behind the game Gauntlet, dress it up in the style and trappings of the movie Aliens, add a couple of clever, never-before-seen ideas, and what have you got..?” What you got was a scrolling overhead maze of a space station, one or two marines with limited ammunition, and aliens that kept coming. It was Team17’s second game and its first full-price one, and it entered the Gallup Amiga chart at number 2 at Christmas 1991. The series it started ran for five years on the Amiga and came back in 2009.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Team17, of Wakefield.
- Released: December 1991, for Amigas with one megabyte of memory; £24.99.
- Credits: Amiga Power’s review names Andreas Tadic and Peter Tuleby as authors. The One later described Andreas Tadic and the artist Rico Holmes as the duo that produced it. Allister Brimble wrote the music.
- Players: one, or two together.
- Reviews: 82% in Amiga Power; 74% in Amiga Format.
- Later versions: a PC version in 1993.
Johnson and Stone
The two players are Johnson and Stone, sent to Intex Space Research Centre Number 4 without being told much about what they will find. The manual and the “story disk” set the scene but, as Amiga Power’s Rich Pelley complained, were “more than a little cagey about actually revealing anything of any use, such as ooooh, what you actually have to do”. Each level is a mission that reveals a little more.
The first level only asks you to reach the deck lift. The second sends you to the core computer, and then the game turns on you: “the screen glows red, a computerised voice announces ‘destruction is imminent’ and you have one minute to scoot back to the deck lift.” Nobody warned you, so next time you make a note of the route.
Around those objectives the game is about supplies. Doors need keys, and keys run out. Money and ammunition clips lie on the floor, and Intex computer terminals sell equipment for later levels, so it pays to explore before taking the lift. Doors can be shut for good by shooting their controls, and some only open one way. Ducts suck careless players to an early death.
What the reviewers said
Pelley liked the atmosphere most. The aliens bore “an uncanny resemblance to the monsters from Aliens the film”. Team17 suggested playing through a hi-fi in the dark, and Pelley wrote that the rumblings and digitised sound “had me hiding underneath the duvet in sheer terror at times”. He also found it too hard. The aliens needed several shots each and kept coming from generators that could not be destroyed, he ran out of keys and money, and in two-player mode doors could separate the players “for which there really is no excuse”. His Bottom Line called it “a very sophisticated game exploiting the ability of the Amiga to its fullest” and gave it 82%, adding that Team17, “ex-PD people”, “just need to work on making their games ever so slightly less exasperating”.
Amiga Format gave it 74%. It called the game “by far the best looking of any shoot out in this style”, but said that “some control problems” spoiled it.
The players bought it anyway. The Gallup chart in Amiga Power’s January 1992 issue had Alien Breed as a new entry at number 2, behind Lotus Turbo Challenge II.
The series
- Alien Breed Special Edition 92 (1992).
- Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues (1993): Amiga Power gave it 81%.
- Alien Breed: Tower Assault (1994): 46% in Amiga Power, against 86% in The One and 91% in Amiga Action.
- Alien Breed 3D (1995): the series in first person, on the A1200. Jonathan Nash’s Amiga Power review called it “a ripping game, and an amazing accomplishment” and gave it 91%.
- Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds (1996): Amiga Power gave 59% to the 2MB version and 54% to the 4MB version.
- Alien Breed Evolution (2009): a remake for Xbox Live Arcade, released in episodes from 16 December 2009, with PlayStation Network and PC versions to follow.
The low Amiga Power scores for Tower Assault and later Team17 games were part of a long public row between the magazine and the company, told in Amiga Power versus Team17.
Released source code
The source code of Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds came complete on Amiga Format’s cover CD in March 1997.
Sources
- Amiga Power issue 8, December 1991, pages 52–53: Alien Breed review by Rich Pelley (credits, price, gameplay, Bottom Line, 82%).
- Amiga Format issue 29, December 1991: Alien Breed review (£25.99, 74%).
- Amiga Power issue 9, January 1992: Gallup Amiga chart (new entry at number 2).
- Amiga Power issue 23, March 1993: Alien Breed Special Edition 92 in a mail-order price list.
- The One issue 51, December 1992: Superfrog preview, crediting Tadic and Holmes with Alien Breed.
- The One issue 60, September 1993: Team 17 diary (PC version finished).
- Amiga Format issue 103, November 1997: interview with Allister Brimble.
- Amiga Power issue 40, August 1994: Alien Breed 2 recalled as “AP32, 81%”.
- Amiga Power issue 48, April 1995: The Disseminator table (Tower Assault in The One, Amiga Action and Amiga Power).
- Amiga Power issue 56, December 1995: Alien Breed 3D review by Jonathan Nash, 91%.
- Amiga Power issue 65, September 1996, pages 14–16: Alien Breed 3D II review by Jonathan Nash.
- Amiga Format issue 95, March 1997: cover CD contents.
- Gematsu, “Alien Breed Evolution hits 360 December 16”, 4 December 2009 (web, secondary).