Alien (1982 video game)

Alien is a 1982 maze video game based on the 1979 film of the same name, published by Fox Video Games for the Atari 2600. The game has the player control a human moving through the hallways of a space ship avoiding the adult alien and destroying the small alien eggs. In some gameplay modes, they can collect a flamethrower to fend off aliens or collect items to make them vulnerable to the player's touch. After clearing a maze of its eggs, the players have a bonus round where they must reach the top of the screen to collect a prize.

Along with Mega Force and M*A*S*H, Alien was programmed by Doug Neubauer and among the many film tie-in video games made for 20th Century Fox's video game division, Fox Video Games. It was one of the first transmedial works in the Alien franchise since the release of the film.

Reviews from The Video Game Update and IGN found the game to be derivative of other earlier games like Pac-Man (1980). Other reviewers commented on the graphics finding that Xenomorphs either resembles venus fly traps or came off as cute. Journalist Robin Sloan summarized that neither Alien (1982) or many of the other video games in the Alien franchise were as influential as the films were for other later video games.