Alien Trilogy

Alien Trilogy is a science fiction first person shooter loosely based on the first three Alien movies. It was released for PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1996, and later ported to MS-DOS in 1997.

The game only loosely follows the storyline of the Alien movies. The player undertakes the role of Ellen Ripley, the main character of the movies (portrayed by Sigourney Weaver) and apart from Bishop, there are no other major characters in the game. The storyline is advanced solely through the use of detailed text-based mission briefings at the start of each level and there are short cut scenes at the end of each game that provide a small amount of closure to the events of the preceding missions.

There are three sets of levels. The first is on the Colony, anologous to Aliens, the second is on the Prison, anologous to Alien 3 (which isn't canonical since in the film, the prison had no weapons) and the third in on the Derelict spaceship, anologous to Alien though most of the level scenery is invented by the creators since so little of it is seen in the film.

Gameplay wise, Alien Trilogy is best described as a straightforward shooter. There are objectives that must be addressed and Aliens must be eliminated. If the player gets less than 50% in "Mission" and/or "Aliens" meters, the mission must be repeated. Though it is similar to Doom, limited use of the Y-axis can be used to look up and down, whereas in Doom there was no Y-axis aiming. Weapons are the standard set seen in Aliens, with the addition of seismic charges (which were only mentioned in the film). There's a pistol, shotgun, pulse rifle, flamethrower and smartgun to fight the enemies with.

Lamps like those of the marines' and the videogame-only night vision goggles can be obtained for enhanced sight in low light areas.

Alien Trilogy has a variety of scenery, ranging from cargo holds, a cryogenic chamber, and the alien nest itself. Enemies look well enough at far, but up close they become severely pixilated, especially compared to the cleaner models of Alien vs Predator for the Atari Jaguar. Explosions are quite nice and a joy to look at, but nothing special is overall present by the graphic quality.

Sound effects are mostly sampled from the movie, with the PC version having slightly altered sounds for the adult aliens and occasional lines delivered by Ripley in-game (not by Sigourney Weaver though). The soundtrack is a mix of electronic and classical instruments and sound effects like aliens hissing or thunder cracking, delivering an action oriented music sheet similar to that found on Probe's own Alien 3 for the Sega Genesis and Amiga.

The game has some pretty brutal death scenes when the player loses their health. For example, Ripley's head is torn off by a xenomorph, and her face is mangled by a facehugger.

Alien Trilogy was developed by Probe Entertainment for the console versions and Sculptured Software oversaw the DOS port which later followed.

The game was published by Acclaim and Fox Interactive.

An updated version was released on Zoom Platform in September 2020, courteously of Throwback Entertainment and Jordan Freeman Group, but was removed again after a few months.