Alien Breed Obliteration
What is it?
Windows XP or Windows 2000—untested on Windows 98/95/ME.
Back in the early 1990's there was a small software company called Team 17. Although they are now known throughout the world as being the company behind the universally successful 'Worms' franchise, the company started from far more humble beginnings and was initially dedicated to developing games solely for the Commodore Amiga home computer. Before Worms, Team 17 had several highly acclaimed games under its belt, including Project X, Body Blows and Assassin, but their most popular product by far was the Alien Breed series.
The original Alien Breed was basically an unlicensed computer game version of James Cameron's classic 80's sci-fi film 'Aliens'. The game featured space marines, a large multi-planetary corporation, Giger-esque aliens (including eggs and little critters that suspiciously resembled face-huggers), an arsenal heavy weaponry and a familiar background story about a research station that had ceased transmitting communication. The game perfectly captured the film's sense of claustrophobia and genuine fear through its clever map designs and high-quality atmospheric visual and audio effects. Most importantly though, and unlike many games of the same genre, although ammo was strictly limited the aliens spawned continuously—meaning that if you wanted to survive you had to stay on the move.
A year or so later, Team 17 released a special edition of Alien Breed as a budget title. Featuring more levels and slightly better gameplay, this was the title from the series that was most fondly remembered by many players. Although subsequent sequels were technically superior, the essential unofficial 'Aliens' tie-in was lost and the sprites became more colourful and less sinister.
Many hours of my youth were spent in those gloomy metallic corridors, mowing down the endless hordes of alien scum while trying to reach an exit lift before the station's self destruct sequence completed. I personally completed it with a friend in one sitting (i.e. without cheating or using the level codes), but only once. The game was hard, but once hooked it was near impossible to stop coming back for one more go. Many people continued to play it regularly even after seeing the end-game sequence and all the game had to offer—which is the sure sign of a classic.
Several years have since passed and unfortunately the glory days of the Amiga have long gone. Alien Breed has remained a fond memory to many, but because of the current state of the computer/console gaming market it seems unlikely that Team 17 will ever release a much needed update of the game. In the past few years they've had two new Alien Breed products in development, but no-one was willing to put down the cash to publish either game. Things may change, but for now it looks as though the Alien Breed series is over.
But hang on… All is not yet lost. A quick search of the Internet will pull up a number of home-brew projects dedicated to recreating this classic game. At the time of writing, this remake is the only one that has reached the point of completion (at least with regard to re-creating the one-player experience). However, as with any remake, a few things have been changed from the Amiga version we all know and love, but the intention behind these changes was (where possible) to improve upon the original. We could have created a carbon copy of Alien Breed SE, but hey, there's this thing called emulation that can help you if that's what you are looking for. Instead we decided to use the same look-and-feel to create an entirely new 15-level game so that Alien Breed veterans can battle through a fresh campaign.
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