Aliens
A modest chart run, and a cautionary tale
Electric Dreams' film licence charted at #19 and #13 and left — and the period pages that appear to show it at number one a year later are video charts, not games charts.
Aliens, the James Cameron film licence, published in Britain by Electric Dreams. CRASH reviewed two different Electric Dreams games under the name — one scoring 84%, one listed as “Aliens U S Version” scoring 45%.
Chart performance
CRASH Hotline Top 20, 2 appearances:
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Aug 1987 | #19 |
| Oct 1987 | #13 |
A film licence that entered low, rose slightly and left.
⚠ Not every Aliens chart row is a games chart
Aliens also appears at #1 in CRASH in August 1988 and in ZZAP!64 in November 1988 — a year after the game’s run had ended, and neither figure belongs to the game.
Both are a different medium. CRASH printed a video rental chart — films on VHS. ZZAP!64 ran a readers’ poll page stacking “MY FAVOURITE PIECE” (music), “MY FAVOURITE ARCADE” (coin-ops) and “MY FAVOURITE VIDEO” (films). Both look like games charts at a glance: a title, a rank, a run of consecutive numbers.
The giveaway is in the rows themselves:
1 (1) PLATOON RCA/COLUMBIA
2 (3) ALIENS CBS/FOX
3 ( ) LETHAL WEAPON WARNERRCA/Columbia, CBS/Fox and Warner are video distributors. And in the ZZAP!64 poll, Aliens sits above Blade Runner, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Beverly Hills Cop II — a list of films.
The wider lesson holds for every film and arcade licence of the period. A title string carries no medium, no platform and no version, and a magazine that reviewed games also printed charts for films, music and coin-ops. Check what is being ranked before reading a position.