Alien Breed

Alien Breed is the first in the Alien Breed series of science fiction shooter video games played with a top-down view, for one or two players. It was released in 1991 by Team17 for the Commodore Amiga and later in 1993 by MicroLeague for MS-DOS.

Gameplay

The game was based heavily, and unofficially, on the Alien films, specifically Aliens, and also on the 8-bit-era games Laser Squad and Paradroid (although the game bears some gameplay similarities with Gauntlet, with which it has been compared, as well an obvious comparison with Sega's Alien Syndrome). Alien Breed consists of the player or players having to find the lift down to the next level, occasionally setting the self-destruct sequence to blow up the level above them. The players collect or purchase a variety of weapons from the space station's computer terminals. In some versions of the game, these so-called Intex terminals provide additional features such as a clone of the classic computer game Pong. Credits found on the ground have to be saved for these weapons and other enhancements, each giving the players an edge over the gradually more and more powerful Alien forces. In advanced levels, players are occasionally trapped in enclosed spaces with huge "boss" aliens, reminiscent of the Alien Queen.

Alien Breed (series)

Alien Breed is a series of Gauntlet-style top-down sci-fi shoot 'em up video games developed by Team17 primarily for the Commodore Amiga in the 1990s, heavily inspired by the Alien films. Later, first person shooter titles were released under the Alien Breed name. In 2009, the series was revived with Alien Breed Evolution.

List of Alien Breed games

First era

Second era

References

Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues

Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues is the sequel to Alien Breed, a science-fiction-themed, top-down shooter largely inspired by the Alien films. It was released in 1993 by Team17 for the Amiga, available in both OCS/ECS and AGA versions. This is the first title that Team17 had developed to take advantage of Commodore's then new AGA Chipset.

The AGA version of the game was also included as an extra in the Amiga CD32 version of Alien Breed: Tower Assault.

The game engine for Alien Breed II was largely rewritten to allow smoother scrolling between screens (the code for which was carried over to another Team17 project, Superfrog, a 2D platformer game). The graphics were also vastly improved, as were the size and number of levels (there are 17 in AB-II compared to 6 in Alien Breed and 12 in Alien Breed Special Edition 92). The difficulty curve for AB-II is also steeper than that of its predecessor.

Alien Breed II is the only game in the series that gives players the option of choosing between four characters, each with their own specific strengths and weaknesses.