C64 Longplay - Aliens

[@brynj13]

I played the hell out of this when I was a kid. First game I remember that really felt like I was playing the movie. It followed the plot well, had the iconic imagery, and I actually felt bad when I lost marines (the mission they had to cut through the door and then the airduct mission...)

[@gerryconwayvoice]

The hours I spent on this in 86 and 87... Oh, my.

[@Octavianus08]

As a little kid i never got passed the flying part... thank you for showing me the whole game!

[@SpacePoodle]

😂 same here!

[@verbosedy9947]

Me as well!

[@cormacsee]

Me also

[@runetoudahl6]

Haha same. Same with my friends back then :)

[@razcarsey6635]

I learned to get past it, but I think the flying part was single-handedly responsible me me breaking a few Slik Stiks. I can still almost feel the soreness in my palm from pushing the stick way too hard to make those tight turns.

[@hollywooda111]

Its mad to think in my gaming life I've gone from playing this to Alien Isolation!?... just blows your mind.

[@Tony-1971]

Scott Lee Clayton. I remember arguing like fuck with you over on another video about Katie Hopkins and her views on fat people. At least i can totally agree with you here, lol.

[@hollywooda111]

AESCULAPTORmark3 Thats the beauty of games! ha, But the Aliens do look a bit chunky in this game...;-) ha.

[@AllGamingStarred]

Isolation is ok, but the facehuggers are a pain in the ass. why they couldn't just make a true hide and seek experience without weapons is beyond me.

[@bud389]

@@AllGamingStarred Because weapons are a key component of the Alien franchise, and "hide and seek" games are annoying and boring. Making Alien Isolation a survival game over a hide and seek game made it the amazing game it is.

[@AllGamingStarred]

@@bud389 and i agree with you 100%. It's amazing how stupid i was beforehand

[@kummer45]

When I play Aliens Fireteam Elite, I think a lot about this game. The c64 Aliens remained a classic on its own. Video games now are so different from what we had back then.

[@michaelenglish3313]

I'm pretty amazed at the quality of the soundtrack. It is extremely creepy.

[@AnonRanGER01]

+Michael English Especially in the landing sequence.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

Cant stand the ragtime blues track in the first part, but else than that its pretty good :)

[@nunyabizness3866]

C64 had a decent sound chip

[@robertmiles9942]

@@Marius-vw9hp That's a nod to Master of the Lamps, another Activision game. That's why it's out of place; it's nothing to do with the films.

[@robertmiles9942]

Creepier than it's supposed to be actually, given the longplayer didn't put his emu in NTSC mode. It's an Activision title so needs the faster U.S. timings.

[@sdsuman1]

One of the GREATEST C64 games easily

[@SpaRtanl33tz]

This game used to scare the shit out of me as a kid playing in the dark.

[@leokrupp4442]

I think I was 6 or 7 when I played it. It's hard to think a hand full of pixels could be scary.

[@carpetmonk]

this had nothing on the Alien... that one took a couple years off.

[@RiccardoAlbertini]

the music, the tension, shit... this was FUCKING scary.

[@GordonBraicks]

I was also going to write this :-)

[@suncity803]

was a good game, and a decent Aliens game to boot, for that time. Was quite amibitious and did a good job of, if not scaring the player, but keeping them tense and on their toes I thought.

[@CompTechMike]

Boy did I love this game as a kid! Used to watch the movie every day after school, too. So much nostalgia! :)

[@ryokomocha]

I LOVED this game. But I had a flawed disc, and I was never able to go past the stage where you saved the marines as they cut through the door, even though I managed to complete it with survivors (barely.) That thumping music still gives me shakes today. I had never seen what existed beyond that point until now!

[@CUEBALL424]

Yeah, who ever is playing made that opening flying sequence look really easy.... it wasn't!

[@ItsMrChristmas]

It really is. Don;t fly towards the "next" box, fly towards the most distant one you can currently see.

[@arielwalter9867]

it was still fricken hard!@@ItsMrChristmas

[@Megawatt]

Ariel Lopez I never beat it, always had to skip using code 2727H

[@SuperAwesomeMovies]

Yeah, learning curve was pretty harsh.

[@bartacomuskidd775]

please.. this was the easiest level. then the queen fight, then rescuing newt, then the processor fight.. then that rotten flamethrower fight in ops.. then.. that stupid maze

[@snarfies]

That flamethrower room killed me every time. Hicks was so NOT okay at the end of that video...

[@lurkerrekrul]

The trick is to NOT kill the aliens for as long as possible. Every time you kill the aliens, they get faster. Instead, use the flamethrower to make them back up. They can't hurt your guy in that level, so don't be afraid of them touching you.

[@sglider]

Always loved this game and how faithful to the movie it was in picking key scenes to recreate. So much better than NES, SNES and other later movie adaptations that were filled with annoying creatures, items and situations that never existed in the films they were trying to emulate. Kudos to Activision on this classic!

[@letMeSayThatInIrish]

2:10 It's important to be able to identify one's equipment before a dangerous mission.

[@Freddyfan1428]

I think that was more about copy protection than anything else, :-) . Typically you'd have to refer to pictures or words in the instruction manual to check what the items were and if you screwed up it wouldn't let you play any further. This was before copy protection when pirating was rampant and easily done.

[@MadTheDJ]

The trick to the Aliens In The Ceiling level with the flamethrower was to NOT shoot them! If you simply move up and down like Pong and touch each of the five aliens with the flamethrower, they scurry back to the other side of the screen. keep doing that as best you can, going up and down as each approaches, you may only lose 1 or 2 marines. With some practice, you will lose none. The Ripley Saving Newt level only requires you to shot an alien with 2 rounds of ammo to kill it, but most of the time you can run around them. This helps conserve your ammunition for Egg Chamber, to get past the Queen and have some rounds left in case you absolutely have to shoot the aliens.

[@EternalRoman]

+MadTheDJ Well I guess the player was trying to be a bit movie accurate since Ripley does run out of ammo when the "Queen" gets to them at the lift LOL

[@MadTheDJ]

To beat the Queen with the power loader, you get her to one side of you and bash her with backhand hits until her power is down and she becomes slow. Then pull one of your claws back, centre it and wait till she tries to come at you. When she does, shoot your claw forward and grab her. Hold her until the air lock door opens, position her above it and drop her in. Game Over, you win!

[@GrumpyOldMilk]

Heh, nice to hear from another person who beat the game with way more marines surviving than in the movie.

[@ronaldh8446]

Exaxtly. You bump them back for as long as you can before you begin torching them. Best way to have more Marines going into the next level.

[@theclaybeartravels3596]

yep, you shoot the fast ones and push back the slow ones.

[@stephentumlin8613]

I was ten years old and this was the first time I’d seen a swear word in a video game. Ah, thanks for bringing back memories from 35 years ago. Cheers!

[@DanielWesleyKCK]

This is still one of the most terrifying, suspenseful games I've ever played.

[@Dukefazon]

Check out Friday the 13th on C64, that scream still gives me goosebumps... I'm not saying that it's better (it isn't) but it's a good contender for scary c64 game :)

[@tamastabi3182]

Check Prometheus. That is the scariest C64 game ever.

[@esvegateban]

Can't love enough, the memories! One of my first proper games, ages ago. Still have the C64, still works. Such a hard game!

[@RpTheHotrod]

I always loved this music theme. :)

[@Koshiro2k3]

I would pay for a good quality modern version of this theme.

[@RpTheHotrod]

​@@Koshiro2k3the intro of this song really reminds me of it! music.kzbin.info/www/bejne/eqime3yeq8-Gors&si=LCBh6SzDhYiAGRCM

[@Dukefazon]

2:20 - the weapon selection screen music is really similar to the Alien Breed games’ background creepy music. Alien Breed might have been inspired by this.

[@kaidzaack2520]

The whole Alien Breed series is a (good) rip-off. H.R. Giger never copyrighted the Alien design (Artist, not a businessman). Gladly I met him once...

[@Dukefazon]

@@kaidzaack2520 You are so lucky! I remember the news he died, a huge alien friend of mine and I quickly got together on a weekend and watched the first movie in his honor :)

[@kektimus]

I remember playing this tons. It's a really creative and varied game, especially for the time.

[@WaltThizzney415]

This game was the first game beat thanks for putting this together!

[@KaitainCPS]

Given that there can only be a max of around 150 warriors in the colony, the marines must be close to a tactical victory by the end of the second stage.

[@Djclyve]

This game did an awesome job capturing the horror and solitude of Aliens. I don't think any other game comes close.

[@MiloDC]

Is Alien: Isolation a joke to you?

[@nichderjeniche]

True.

[@nichderjeniche]

​@@MiloDCevery non C64 game is a joke for me.

[@catiseith]

To think that the final battle with the Queen Alien is better than in *Aliens: Colonial Marines*

[@Zeithri]

+CaitSeith I think they're about equal. A:CM was a rather subpar game that shit all over the Alien franchise I agree wholeheartedly. But the final fight when the Queen appeared walking out from the ship's wreckage was a moment of pure terror I experienced. Likewise I think Stage 5 ( _or earlier_ ) where you have no weapons and have to escape from that "King" Alien was also utterly effective. But the rest sucked.

[@OpenMawProductions]

+Zeithri You push four buttons and she gets ejected from the ship, only to re-emerge a second later and get taken out via cutscene. That's horrible.

[@Zeithri]

OpenMawProductions That is true, except you also need to get to those buttons. And really, how is that any different from so many other games today? I miss the time when final bosses were a fight to the death as opposed to a trigger-fest.

[@OpenMawProductions]

+Zeithri Which is insanely easy. There's literally no challenge with the queen in ACM. None. It's not a fight to the death. You fight to a scripted event. A fight to the death would actually let you, ya know, kill the queen. YOU would be the one to end her, not a supporting character in a cutscene.

[@Zeithri]

OpenMawProductions I don't see the point. Why are you trying to argue when I agree with you? I guess you're trying to say that in Aliens on C64, it's understandable due to the time it was released compared to A:CM? Because I whole heartily agree on that. Also, did you know that in AvP1 ( _1999_ ), you can actually kill the Queen during the Marine ending without blowing her out the airlock? That's how I beat her the first time I played it until I figured out the other part. But it's much more fun to just spawn like 30 Marine bots and see them try to take her on :P

[@tdrewman]

6:04 I had a cracked version of the game, I used a hex editor and put in all the swear words back in the game.

[@robertmiles9942]

Fortunately you didn't have to edit the bitmap at the loader scene. I'm guessing the censors didn't know how to do that, either.

[@tim_nj_devil176]

I am guessing since it was such an iconic scene, the censors let it pass.

[@FlightDreamz]

Someone should upload that to csdk.dk!

[@mollari2261]

@PaleDeth I recall reading an article about this in Commodore PowerPlay magazine (!) - the drop ship sequence in "Aliens" did in fact re-use the "Master of the Lamps" engine.

[@NuntiusLegis]

Quite an homage to that game with even very similar music.

[@tims4502]

I like to image pilots listening to the stage 1 song every time they descend and land

[@MadTheDJ]

Rewatching this for nostalgia and remembered something else. In the second stage, getting the 4 marines to the APC, one trick is to get any marines out of the aliens' lair areas FIRST, because in those sections, the aliens come out of the walls, so can attack from four sides. Even if you don't get them to the APC right away, just get them out of the aliens' lair and leave them in a normal section until you can come back to the. Also get any marines in the three- or four-way normal sections to two-way sections, so if they're attacked, the aliens can only come at you from two directions. Man, I played the hell out of this game! I had the areas all mapped out in a notebook (which had similar info for other games. I wish I still had that notebook!), had all the routes memorized. The toughest stage was still the first one, flying the drop ship. Those twists and turns got super tight towards the end and I'm sure I wore out a few joysticks ramming it back and forth.

[@nanorider426]

Well played! The stage before the air ducts, in the operations room, was SO hard. I never got passed with all marines intact before Hicks could cut through the door.

[@carpetmonk]

well you are lucky then.. if operations gave you problems.. then the gauntlet would have driven you mad.

[@CrimsonAlice]

I haven't thought about this game in decades...man I used to love this

[@billbog25]

Played this game so much as a kid

[@PsychoticLuke]

This game scared me as a kid! Wow... I miss my old Commodore 64.

[@altidgodt84]

I reamber i was amazed by the grafix, was sooo good back then!!! Now it looks wired 🤣 And that flying part was hard asf....

[@hitmixhyepock9405]

I went to my friend john kimbles house for the first time to hangout when we were in 5th grade. He had this, it blew my mind how amazing it looked. To me back then it looked like a movie.

[@lurkerrekrul]

I used to have a list of passwords for this game, for all the sections with all the marines alive. I'm sure you can find such a list on the net now, but I made mine the hard way. :) I'm surprised at all the people who have trouble with the flying sequence. After playing Master of the Lamps, I found it pretty easy. Maybe it's the flight-style controls that people can't deal with, since the standard today is to push forward to go up...

[@denambren]

It's all about Master of the Lamps! Had the same training so found it easy in the same way.

[@thehmc]

I forgot how much this game scared the shit out of me.

[@Audfile]

I remember, this was 5th grade. It's amazing how advanced the film was and is as a movie, could release today and wouldnt be out of place. But the games.. we had the C64 folks. We are now inches away from games indistinguishable from movies.

[@gordlawson11]

23:36 - i never figured out how to get past the queen! always had to use the 'skip level' cheat when i got there.

[@greensun1334]

At least, the Game follows the Movie perfect! Once I had a C64 with more than 500 Games - but I've never heard about this Game before...

[@nowhereman5760]

Always wanted to have this game when I was a kid , it still looks wicked

[@ParchmentScroll]

Got this game for Christmas the year it came out. Played it incessantly for pretty much that entire year.

[@enkenbrandt]

I remember that my first name, Eddie, was a password. I tried it at random once and it worked, but Hicks was missing. Obviously, I was not okay with this.

[@Zeithri]

Hahah, like start at final stage, all marines are alive *EXCEPT* Hicks :P

[@DLiberator78]

Here in the UK this version was known as Aliens US Version. The other version was kind of a 1st person shooter where you just had a cursor and had to shoot aliens as they appeared in certain rooms. I preferred this version though. I played this on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Thanks for uploading.

[@pelimies1818]

I think the feel of the movie is catched well into this game. Great stuff!

[@Gigas0101]

NOBODY gets through the flamethrower segment unscathed.

[@RobPryme]

Am I the only one who remembers the music during the drop ship sequence being about 50% faster?

[@Palmroxx]

In the film (Aliens), there's the same dropship sequence of boxes/lines that need to be followed to reach LV-246 (aka Hadley's Hope and The Derelict, and one of the aliens/xenomorphs breeding grounds from Alien).

[@Venturai]

Wow, talk about bringing back memories! Spent a LOT of time on this one.

[@bud389]

The flying section is just ridiculous. Tried it myself, oh man.

[@IanPeon]

That flying sequence was a nightmare, and much scarier than anything else in the entire franchise.

[@stephenthomas1492]

Born in 1976 myself! We're part of the lost generation and our childhood ROCKED.

[@cunning-stunt]

Fuck! the C64 had an awesome audio chip.

[@johnl9843]

That was really good graphics for the C64 for that time. I could imagine this game glitching up so bad on the floppy disks with the amount of memory it looked like it used (common for me back in those days)

[@Knyght373]

Aaaa, he did the flamethrower section all wrong :| From what I remember you're supposed to not fry them just hold them back with the small flame so you have less of the fast bastards.

[@plinker439]

True that! (:

[@russellloganmusic5023]

Wow the memories

[@sparkles122]

Those damn rings. Could never get past the level. It had a level skip code in the cassette inlay though lol

[@760bigbird]

The boss battle was my favorite as a kid. Once I found the level skip Easter egg I played that boss battle religiously. Plus I thought it was so funny that the "B-Word" was in a video game.

[@barthilhorst7551]

I've never seen this game and it looks really cool, it follows the movie very well and there are some very nice "photorealistic" images too.

[@gergall1809]

Came looking for the dropship flight theme-Thanks!

[@iyumcropus1]

I always thought Ripley looked like Art Garfunkel on the The End screen. :)

[@TheDalien]

3:50 Master of the lamps?

[@The_Real_DCT]

yeah it reused the engine they built for Master of the lamps

[@dominikfilkus]

3:37 feels like the specific part from The master of the Lamps. Music is quite similar as well.

[@Zullia]

I'm too young to have played a C64 (i was born in 88) but watching this, i cant help but think that this must be quite faithful to the source material if you consider the limitations of the systems back in 1986. Now if i had been a teenager in 1986, watched and loved Aliens the way i do now, i would have played this game and thought "i'm so sad the technology isn't here to make this game realistic, i wish it was made in the future". Now the technology is here and WE STILL CANT FUCKING FUND A GOOD ALIENS GAME. Such waste.

[@sarblader]

Zullia There are already good alien games.

[@casedistorted]

+Sarblade Eh I don't know about that..

[@Zullia]

TheKnowerseeker I have. And it's the closest ANY game developer has gotten yet, but i guess i was refering to ALIENS the movie as an adaptation which is a lot more difficult in my opinion to get right.

[@Ukulele_Ad]

+Zullia "i'm so sad the technology isn't here to make this game realistic, i wish it was made in the future" - I thought that about every C64 game and scifi/fantasy film i watched as a kid in the 80s!

[@carpetmonk]

activision packed all this on one diskette too.. and them and epyx had fast loading down to a science. these people knew how to work with 64k.. not even 64k.. some of that was tied into rom and operation.. 50kb games.. artwork.

[@ParchmentScroll]

Yeah, one of the things I really like about this game is that the better you do at the early sections, the more leeway you have in subsequent sections. Getting all your marines back to the APC means having more room for screwups in the blowtorch section. Keeping all of them alive in that section means having more grenades to save you in the air duct sequence... After that, the marines are irrelevant. Kind of like the movie. :P

[@wookiedog]

Awesome man, this brings back the memories alright. I never did get to the end so tnx for the post :)

[@AllGamingStarred]

why is the ring part so damn hard?

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

[3:38] Weird to see and hear "Master of the Lamps" in a game about aliens... Never played this game but looks interesting. One thing that always made me wonder, about the movie, is: If it took Ripley *57 years* to go from LV426 to the space station where she meets Burke and the Colonial Marines, etc, how long did it take them to get back to LV426? Were they in hypersleep for half a century or what?

[@Dethmeister]

Pretty sure her nav computer malfunctioned and she was just drifting through space until a salvage crew found her by chance.

[@hypomaniahunter]

still better than colonial marines

[@Canaris3]

I was gonna say the same thing ....

[@hypomaniahunter]

haha

[@Darkpara1]

There was probably early gameplay footage of this game that contained stuff that wasn't in the game on release. Oh wait... that was colonial marines too. Damn.

[@gochem3013]

AVP 2004 doesn't have Marines. WHY TCF?!

[@codprocamp4690]

Yeah okay there

[@gochem3013]

3:36 My favorite track.

[@padawanmage71]

Woof, I remember being stuck on so many levels of this game!

[@OldCityBob]

I'm about to show the movie to my son for the first time. I just showed him the opening of this game because the music is so awesome. Should have been in the movie.

[@VindicatorJones]

God, the hours I put into this game.. 90% of the time the flamethrower part would always get me.. I only managed to get past that a handful of times, but then died in the corridor maze... glad to finally see the end of the game!

[@TheRetroByte]

I so nearly put this game down after not been able to get past the first level. I'm so glad i kept at it. Such a cool game 👍👍🕹

[@LAVERTUEG]

I loved this game. But I was so scared playing it.

[@Ric_Roar]

I am glad I had a cheat code to get to the final battle as a kid. 🙂

[@ActionDef]

This is one of the rare games where the graphics get better and better towards the end. Usually it's vice versa because of developing time vs. release date, like Platoon for example.

[@Dethmeister]

4:52 Does anybody know what song this little segment sounds like? It reminds me of maybe a Beatles song but I can't figure it out. The rest of it sounds a bit like Money by the Beatles but there's not a break like that segment.

[@star_man]

I don't think it's a coincidence that the flying section bares an uncanny similarity to Master of the Lamps which was released a year earlier by Activision and was created by Peter Kaminski and Russell l Lieblich who also are on the credits of this game.

[@bobbywright6062]

Sick beat at 3:36

[@ParchmentScroll]

25:00 - The most epic moment in my early video gaming life. Nothing before or since has compared.

[@ZI-WAN-KHAN]

I had the FPS version from Electric Dreams, I did not know there was this version but thanks for the video.

[@KaitainCPS]

@ActionDef It was hard, yes, but it was good. Very tense. Also, it had to be treated as part strategy game. You could type out sequences of moves for your team to go through the base quickly, which (in combo with the map) allowed rapid progress. It was a pretty neat concept for the time - part arcade game, part primitive FPS, part RTS. My only gripe is that you had Burke as one of the six playable characters but no Hudson. That never made any sense to me.

[@Lance-Urbanian-MNB]

Nice. C64 was my youth and that game one of the best. The most fun was the 2nd stage to play over and over. Tip for the Flamer Room (control). Don't always kill them. Holding the very fast ones back gives you more time to deal with the others. Also a pair of Aliens with both retreat when the first one gets held back. The air duct maze was hell for me. Usually I could get there with everyone alive but then I wasted marines just as fast to pass this if I even managed to pass at all. Ripley run was fun. Rather easy. As a challenge I used only one bullet to kill Aliens and then see with how many bullets where left after wining this stage. Or turned around. Pass all the Aliens not killing any at all. End fight was disappointing, mechanical wise. Overall great game for the time.

[@MrMoorkey]

Weirs seeing this in colour, as my C64 only ever got hooked up to a cruddy old B/W TV you had to tune with a screwdriver.

[@dannyhernandez1212]

This brings back good memories of my late older brother. ❤❤❤

[@QuagmiresDooflab]

The music on the first level is amazing.

[@Halligen1972]

Russel Lieblich did a great job with the soundtrack!

[@Fireinthestubble]

I loved this game. The music is still good today.

[@chris101gray3]

God the things we had to put up with back in the day

[@frankbizzoco1954]

For a game in the 80s, that comes about as close as it gets to following the movie. All the way down to the diallogue. Its a lot closer than that Famicom Disk beta game that was a port of the MSX game if I'm not mistaken. I'll have to give this one a try.

[@suncity803]

ripley dodging all those aliens in the corridors like a ninja

[@MightyBowser]

25:10 "Get away from her, you BITCH!" I lol´d hard! :D Dieses Aliens kannte ich noch gar nicht. Ich hatte das andere, wo man durch die immer gleichen Gänge schlurft.. aber da war die Mukke so toll.

[@FredVesseur]

Great to see, I never did get to the end of this game so now I know.

[@DarkstarAndrew01]

I loved that game, programmed it from a book I purchased from a base BX, typed in every line of code and stored it on a cassette tape.

[@sithewok4616]

Awesome game. The air duct maze always kicked my ass. So hard.

[@MarioMasterMan64]

This looks like so much fun. Now THIS was made by Aliens fans!

[@ronaldh8446]

Perfect Score Codes... (accomplished in 1987 as a very proud 14 year old! 😊) Drop Ship Maneuvers - 7324G APC Rescue - 2727H Operation Room Attack - 1506E Air Duct Maze - 5761H Newt Rescue - 0640C Queen Confrontation - 0663F Hicks - OK Gorman - OK Vazquez - OK Hudson - OK Drake - OK Frost - OK Dietrich - OK Crowe - OK

[@RetroRobotRadio]

I play a lot of this game in the 80s.

[@The_Real_DCT]

@ActionDef it's also one of those rare games where there is two different versions of the game this US one done by Activision(shown here) and the UK one done by electric dreams which is done in first person