''Alien vs Predator'' is a 1993

beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels, ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

for

Super Nintendo Entertainment System The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Eur ...

, developed by

Jorudan is a Japanese company headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It has been involved in the publishing and developing of video games since 1991, and is currently primarily known for operating jorudan.co.jp, a public transport route navigation website.

and published by Information Global Service in Japan and by Activision internationally. An arcade game of the same title was released by

Capcom is a Japanese video game developer and video game publisher, publisher. It has created a number of List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil' ...

eight months later, but the two games are different and their storylines are unrelated to each other.

Gameplay

''Alien vs Predator'' is a

video game in which the player controls a

Predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

and must advance through various stages killing all of the

Aliens Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrate ...

. The player character may become temporarily invisible and may charge their energy weapons to destroy all onscreen enemies at once.

Story

The game is set on the planet Vega 4 in the city of New Shanghai. A work crew performing underground construction discovers a colony of

which attack them and then quickly moved to the surface. The city is quickly overcome by the Aliens, but the citizens send out a distress signal to Earth which is also received by a passing

ship. The Predators decide to hunt the Aliens on Vega 4, seeing them as challenging prey. The player battles through six stages, fighting various types of Aliens and bosses. Many of the boss enemies are Aliens which have gestated in different types of animals and thus demonstrate characteristics of those animals. These include an aquatic Alien that emerges from a

dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...

, a primate-like Alien gestated in an

ape Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a clade of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and as well as Europe in prehistory), which together with its siste ...

, a winged Alien gestated in a

bat Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most bi ...

, and a

snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

-like Alien. After battling the Aliens on Vega 4 the player Predator travels to the Orion Nebula for the final stage and battles the Alien queen.

Development and release

''Alien vs Predator'' for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was developed by Jorudan, who had previously worked on games such as ''

Xardion is a platform game where the player controls robots with different skills in order to defeat the enemy and reach goals. Story The inhabitants of the three worlds in the Alpha 1 Solar System have been at war for seven months before hostilities up ...

'' and ''

Musya is a 1992 platform game developed by Jorudan for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released by Datam Polystar in Japan on April 21, 1992, followed by English localized version produced by SETA USA and released in North Am ...

'', with Activision producer Tom Sloper overseeing its creation. Both Mitoshi Asakawa and Y. Furusawa serving as designers while Fumihiro Sugiura, Yoshiaki Tejima and Mitoshi Asakawa worked as programmers. Hisaya Yabusaki, Yasuhiko Kikuchi, Kozo Igarashi, Nobuki Kimishima, Katsunori Nakabayashi, Mitsuru Ishida, Takanori Wada and Y. Arai were responsible for the pixel art. The soundtrack was composed by

Tenpei Sato is a video game composer and voice actor. His most notable works are his soundtracks for Nippon Ichi Software games, such as ''Disgaea'' and ''Phantom Brave''. He also provides voice-over for games and movies. Biography Sato was born in 1975 in ...

. Other members also collaborated in its making. Both

Rebellion Developments Rebellion Developments Limited is a British video game developer based in Oxford, England. Founded by Jason and Chris Kingsley in December 1992, the company is best known for its ''Sniper Elite'' series and multiple games in the ''Alien vs. Pre ...

co-founder Jason Kingsley and former Atari Corporation producer James "Purple" Hampton have stated in recent interviews that a port was planned for the Atari Jaguar, but Hampton felt it did not represent the franchise's universe and characters properly, resubmitting the project to both

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

and Activision into a

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

instead. According to Tom Sloper, conversions for the

Sega Mega Drive The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Syst ...

and PC were also under development by

Realtime Associates Realtime Associates is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was founded in 1986 by David Warhol and a group of ex-Mattel Electronics employees originally to create games for the Intellivision system. Since then, the compa ...

but both versions were ultimately scrapped by Activision, who were unhappy with their production. ''Alien vs Predator'' for the Super Nintendo was first released in Japan by Information Global Service on January 8, 1993. The game was then released by Activision in North America in September 1993 and later in Europe on November of the same year. The Japanese version, titled ''Aliens vs. Predator'', has several gameplay differences compared to the international version such as the Predator moving slower, though players can make him run by tapping the direction button twice and sporting an orange color, whereas the Predator in the international version moves faster but is unable to run and sports a brown color, as well as the charging meter for the player's energy weapon being shorter. The Japanese version includes a two-player versus mode in which one player controls a Predator and the other controls an Alien; this mode is absent from the international release.

Reception

''Alien vs Predator'' on the Super NES was met with mixed critical reception since its release.

Notes

References

External links

''Alien vs Predator''
at

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''Alien vs Predator''
at Giant Bomb
''Alien vs Predator''
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Alien vs Predator Central
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alien vs Predator (SNES) 1993 video games Activision games Alien vs. Predator (franchise) games Beat 'em ups Cancelled PC games Cancelled Sega Genesis games Super Nintendo Entertainment System games Super Nintendo Entertainment System-only games Video games developed in Japan Video games set on fictional planets