The Legacy of Aliens

Aside from the dozens and dozens of officially licensed video games featuring "Aliens" video, and the Darkseed duology, there are an mind boggling number of titles that have been inspired (or significantly influenced) by the 1986 James Cameron film.  An incomplete list of IPs in no particular order is as follows: 

• Halo series
• Half-life series
• DOOM series
• Contra series
• Metroid series
• Resident Evil series
• Dead Space series
• Dino Crisis series
• StarCraft series

The list grows even longer when one considering individual games rather than franchises in their entirety.  While original to varying degrees all the games that follow have elements or scenes which are easy to point to and say "that's Aliens" either visually or thematically.  Again, in no particular order here is what I could find:

• The Astyanax (aka The Lord of King)
• Streets of Rage 2 (the amusement park interior)
• Run Like Hell
• Xenophobe
• R-Type
• Ecco the Dolphin (the final boss)
• Space Gun
• Space Hulk
• Alien Storm
• Alien Breed
• Alien Syndrome
• Die Alien Slime
• Slime World
• Duke Nukem 3D
• X-Multiply
• Darius
• Gradius
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (the sewers boss)
• Mega Turrican
• GTFO
• Splatter House
• XCOM (particularly with regards to the Chryssalids and Tentaculats)
• Space Quest II, V and VI
• Prey
• The Colony
• Mass Effect
• Project Firestart
• Stasis
• Cayne
• System Shock
• Parasite Eve 2

...and a couple of games by Psygnosis Limited.  There are probably a bunch of other survival horror games that I haven't mentioned, but I think the point has been made.  A lot of video game developers liked "Aliens" and borrowed ideas from it wholeheartedly.  There's also one more game I didn't mention above because it really has more to do with "Alien" than "Aliens." I want to go into more detail, but that will have to wait until the blog entry after this one.