The Alien franchise has been going strong for over 40 years, and during that time we’ve seen some highs and some very lows of Ripley’s battles with the Alien through many films. During that time, video game companies have tried to ride the waves of the franchise’s popularity from their own versions of the films through to original works of art like Alien Isolation.
A new book, Aliens: The Video Games, by seasoned writer Mike Diver, attempts for the first time to catalogue every Alien game from the early eighties all the way through to the present day. Heavily researched, and featuring interviews with people involved in many of the featured games, it’s now the go-to book for any Alien enthusiast.
I had a chance to speak with Mike on the book, how an idea for an article turned into this project, his love for the Alien series and much more!
Can you give a little introduction to yourself and past work in the industry?
I used to work in the gaming media, in a full-time editorial role at VICE and in a couple of different positions for LADbible Group. I’ve also freelanced over the years for sites and magazines like Retro Gamer, Edge and Kotaku. Prior to that I worked in the music world, with a stint as an album reviews editor for the BBC. Aliens: The Video Games is my sixth book, all of which have had a connection to video games.
Can you remember what your first experience was with an Alien film?
A friend of mine’s dad had the ‘movie novel’ of Alien, which was basically the story of the original movie as told through 1,000 or so stills. I picked that off the shelf in their house a few times. But Aliens was the first movie in the series that I watched, recorded off the television. As such, when I watch that movie now I can still remember where the advert breaks were.
What is it about the Alien franchise and its video games that captured your attention?
The look of it, the style of the environments. The world-building was an instantly appealing aspect of it. It felt so much closer to the computers we were using at the time, the chunky keyboards of home and school, versus the fantastical technology of Star Wars. Even as a kid I knew this grittier and more grounded take on sci-fi was for me. And I don’t think anyone forgets the first time they see a chestburster – and how that’s presented in Alien is so striking, so horrific. It’s way more intense for being real, too, rather than CGI – for happening right in front of the actors. Games-wise, I was very fond of Alien 3 for the Mega Drive and SNES, and played both of those a lot – the former enough where I could auto-pilot myself through a lot of the early levels, which is something you have to learn to do as it’s always against the clock. The mood of the SNES game was something else, though – SEGA’s game had speed and got your pulse racing as that timer ticked down, but Nintendo’s was creepier, and its dynamic music really added to an oppressive atmosphere. They’re both great, but scratch very different itches.
Ripley & Newt from Aliens
Where did the idea of the book come from?
I’d written about the Alien series, through the lens of gaming, a few times. I left the gaming media at the end of 2022, and when Alien Day 2023 was rolling around, I thought about pitching an article on the games of Alien 3, since there are four of them and they’re all pretty distinct – and quite detached from the source material in their own, different ways. It dawned on me that there was no book on the games of Alien/s, which felt like a gap in the market, but I was busy at that time with two other books, both of which were published in 2024. Once they were clear, I pitched the Aliens book idea in early 2024; it got officially picked up that May, and I delivered the final manuscript in mid-2025.
How was the research for the book? Did any particular game prove to be problematic?
Nothing was especially difficult when it came to the main entries, the chapters on the best-known games. There were some interviewees I wanted to include, but I couldn’t get over the line – some because the trails simply went cold, which happens, and others because certain publishers didn’t want staff who were active on new Alien projects speaking to someone writing an (unofficial) book about older ones. Which is fair enough. There’s one game included that remains a bit of a mystery, a Flash-only game called AvP: VU. It’s listed online as a tie-in to Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, but there are conflicting accounts of what type of game it was. Most concur that it was pretty violent, but I couldn’t find any footage or stills of the game, and nobody I’ve spoken to for the book or since really remembers it.
Some of the later sections of the book ended up being some of the most interesting, including Alien vs Predator games, Aliens in other games and stand-alone Predator games. Were these as much fun researching as they were to read, and did you have any other ideas that didn’t make it into the book?
It was always my intention to include AvP games in detail, as they’ve been such an important part of the Alien series’ presence in the gaming space – and some of the games have been excellent, too. A lot of people have fond memories of playing the two PC AvP games, the first by Rebellion and the sequel by Monolith, and the Capcom arcade game is regularly held up as one of the best experiences in its belt-scrolling beat ’em-up genre. AvP 2010 has been reaching new audiences in recent years too, as players have looked for an action title to kind of counterbalance the survival horror of Isolation. So, they all had to feature – and covering AvP also meant I was able to include some weirder things, like the pre-smartphone mobile games, the Rampage-like AvP: Combat Evolved, and a pachinko machine, CR: Alien Vs Predator. The smaller chapters on Aliens in other games – such as Fortnite and Mortal Kombat – and the standalone Predator titles were always meant to be short and sweet, not comprehensive at all, but more of a taste of what else was out there, showing how Alien goes beyond its own IP. I had an Amiga as a kid, so it was essential I got Alien Breed in this book, somewhere.
Sample pages from the book
Did you come up against any surprises that you didn’t see coming as you researched for the book?
I found out about some games that I’d not known about when initially planning the book. A game built by students using Minimates toys was new to me. There are some unofficial games from the very early 1980s which I wasn’t especially familiar with, but they pleasantly surprised me, too. One, The Alien, has some story elements around multiple different alien specimens being loose on a ship, which almost feels like what we saw in Alien: Earth. And then there’s Operation: Aliens, an LCD game made by Tiger and based on Kenner’s brightly coloured toyline of the early 1990s, which was very loosely based on the second movie. It didn’t fully come out, so copies of that are very rare. Covering that allowed me to put in print, definitively, that there was never a cartoon of Operation: Aliens planned. I still see social media posts claiming there was, but nope.
You talked with many of the developers from the games. How was that process for you, and did you get to speak with everyone you wanted to?
Finding people to speak to had its ups and downs. Some I reached out to and immediately got replies, and those went smoothly. Others were harder to lock down, but we got there in the end. And with some, trails went cold and emails stopped being answered, and in a couple of cases I had PR representatives tell me that the studio in question couldn’t help me. I mostly found ways around that, but I definitely didn’t speak to everyone that I wanted to. That there are more than 20 original interviews in this book, though, hopefully shows that I stuck in there as long as I could with a number of the games so as to get some crucial first-hand insight into their creation.
Did you have to leave any interesting segments from the interviews out of the book?
Maybe! It’s been a while since I have checked over the various transcripts and emails. I will say that I was told some things during the interviews for Aliens: Colonial Marines – the one that did come out, in 2013 – which I absolutely couldn’t print, just because it could have gotten messy. I didn’t want this book to stir any fresh controversy.
Alien Isolation Marketing Picture
The timeline of the book is laid out by per film of the series and not by each game’s release date. What led to you going in that direction?
I figured people who weren’t familiar with the Alien games would look to see what was based on the movies first, rather than for any chronological release date order. It made more sense for me to have Alien: Isolation in the same chapter as the 1984 Alien game than it did to have it amid the likes of Colonial Marines and Infestation, as a game that just so happened to come out in the first half of the 2010s. I think it works – if it’s Alien 3 that you loved, you can instantly get to all the games explicitly based on that. If you’re a Prometheus fan, well, good luck.
The book features screenshots and box art of the relevant games. Were any difficult to find or get hold of?
I had no trouble with images. I took some photos myself – they’re nothing special, but they do the job. An industry friend put me in touch with a chap called Clarence Lim, a designer by trade who works on some amazing game packaging and who has a vast Alien collection. He supplied some other photos, including ones of the Japan-only MSX Aliens game and its manual. It’s important to remember that this is a low-budget book – and I don’t mean to do it any kind of disservice by saying that, but if there was a bigger pot to play with, I would have used it for some more consistent photography running throughout or more art commissioned exclusively for the book. Maybe if it sells well enough, we’ll be able to do an expanded, ‘deluxe’ edition in the future.
The cover art of the book is gorgeous. Who was the illustrator, and what was its journey from draft to the final image?
The cover art I did spend a little money on – but a friend of mine, Samantha Mackenzie Greer, ultimately did it for mate’s rates, and I am very grateful. She’s the artist and writer of a cool webcomic called It Eats Planets. I thought the style she expressed with that – dark and dirty sci-fi with hard angles, crisp lines and loads of atmosphere – would work really well for something in the Alien universe, and I think I was right. We had a few back-and-forth emails on the composition; she produced a preliminary sketch, I thought it was a winner, and then a little while later we had the finished cover. I’m really happy with it. It’s the first time I’ve personally commissioned a cover, but I felt that if any of my books deserved that, it was this passion project.
Aliens: The Video Games is released on August 30th, 2026. You can pre-order the book from the publisher directly and receive 20% off the retail price. For US-based readers, you can pick it up from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Also, to keep up to date with the book and Mike, please give him a follow on BlueSky
