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Alien Breed Amiga 1991 Team 17 Original Version


Alien Breed Original Version 1991



Inspired by the Alien film franchise of 1979-1992, Alien Breed is a top-down run and gun game developed by Team 17 and released as an Amiga-first in October of 1991.

Amiga Alien Breed is notable for its accurate controls, 2-player coop, responsive menu systems, 1½ megs of well-drawn graphics and difficult gameplay. Alien Breed also features intricate ambient sounds, digitized speech and dozens of sampled sounds (210K in total) as well as one of the best soundtracks ever heard on the Amiga, composed by Allister Brimble, which is almost five minutes in length. Alien Breed audio is absolutely incredible.

In Alien Breed players move a space marine around maze-like interiors while blasting respawning aliens and collecting keys, credits, ammo and first aid. Keys are used to open the many blast doors whereas other obstructions (objects such as barrels) and movement-rate modifiers (such as oil slicks, ramps, alien resin) can be moved around or over. Players often need to weigh up whether or not the rewards for an action outweigh the resource-expenditure. For example:

  • Is it worth spending 3x keys to get through this corridor and into that chamber? Will I get an equal amount of keys back or yield more keys than I initially had? What else is in there -- credits? 
  • Is it worth expending X amount of ammo to destroy this pack of aliens in order to (temporarily) clear this chamber? Will the reward outweigh the risk?

The original Amiga version of Alien Breed consists of six levels of 8-way scrolling playfields with dimensions of 1x 1264x1440px and 5x 1920x1536px. Alien Breed features 8-way movement and 8-way firing of weapons. Intex Systems terminals are accessed via space bar or fire button.

The original Amiga version of Alien Breed features six tilesets, one rotating reactor core, four large alien bosses and five infra-red "destruction imminent" countdown sequences.

Amiga Alien Breed was programmed by Andreas Tadic and Peter Tuleby (both Swedes) in ASM-One assembler on two Amiga 3000s [1]. Amiga Alien Breed consists of 635K of source code and runs at 50 FPS in 32-color full PAL overscan display mode, with an active drawspace of 293x240.

Alien Breed was designed by Rico Holmes and Martyn Brown. Alien Breed graphics were drawn by Rico Holmes. Impressively, the drop-shadowed xenomorph sprites also highlight with every projectile-impact. The Alien Breed intro was assembled by Tobias Richter.

Intex Systems LNET was voiced by Lynette Reade (sampled speech):

  • Welcome to Intex Systems...
  • Player one requires first aid.
  • Warning! Destruction imminent.
  • Danger...
  • Deck 2.
  • Insert Disk 2.

Alien Breed weapons:

  • Machine gun (starter weapon)
  • Winthorpe PPS Twin-fire EMG (twin rapid-fire)
  • Ammet MPP Flamebow Thrower (flame bouncer)
  • Intex Plasma Shotgun (pump action)
  • Intex Ebon Flame Thrower
  • Rotox Missile Launcher (triple-barrel)
  • Intex Arc Lazer Gun

Alien Breed purchaseable supplies include Electronic Hand Map, Ammo Nybble, First Aid Kit, 6 Keys and Extra Life.

On a technical level Alien Breed is without a doubt the best top-down run and gun game on the Amiga.

The Amiga version of Alien Breed requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 3x 3.5" 880 kB diskettes. It was not installable to hard disk drive.

Alien Breed Manual: 8 pages.

Alien Breed criticism (minor): No footstep sounds, no credits accrued shown, stats are not drawspace-overlayed.

Alien Breed: Special Edition Amiga 1992



Team 17 released Alien Breed: Special Edition '92 for the Amiga in 1992. Alien Breed: Special Edition features an additional 12 stages (for a total of 18 stages) as well as modified level layouts. Alien Breed: Special Edition was designed by Martyn Brown.

Alien Breed: Special Edition requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880 kB diskettes.

Alien Breed IBM PC MS-DOS 1993



Audio Visual Magic Ltd. converted the 1992 Amiga version of Alien Breed Special Edition to IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 in 1993.

PC DOS of Alien Breed was programmed by Gavin Wade in 100% i80x86 assembly language. PC DOS Alien Breed audio was composed by Nigel Taylor and drawn by Mark Smith, Chris Hare and Nik Love-Gittins.

PC DOS Alien Breed requires an i80286 20 MHz CPU (386 DX-33 MHz recommended) and 588,000 bytes of free conventional memory. PC DOS Alien Breed displays in 256-color VGA 320x200 and runs at 50 FPS.

PC DOS Alien Breed audio supports AdLib, Roland and Sound Blaster. Alien Breed employs up to 192K of EMS memory for its sampled sound effects.

PC DOS Alien Breed consists of 18 stages and 750 screens.

  • Alien Breed PC manual: 12 pages
  • Alien Breed PC copy protection: Manual reference: page, row, column, code

The IBM PC version of Alien Breed was distributed on 1x 3.5" 1.44 MB HD diskette and extracts and installs via Team 17 Alien Breed Installation Setup and Audio Visual Magic Configuration Program by Adrian Youlden. The install size is 2 megs and consists of 128 files.

Alien Breed 2 Amiga 1993



Team 17 released Alien Breed 2: The Horror Continues for the Amiga ECS/OCS and AGA in 1993. Alien Breed 2 was programmed by Andreas Tadic, drawn by Rico Holmes and composed by Allister Brimble.

Alien Breed 2 supports M-key map activation, Alt-key weapon cycling, Space-key Intex log-on, single-player or 2-player coop, individual or shared credits, easy or tough difficulties, save/load Hiscores and level codes.

Alien Breed 2 consists of 17 stages most of which are 1600x1200 pixels in size. Alien Breed 2 space marine sprites were improved over those of the original Alien Breed.

Alien Breed 2 requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 3x 3.5" 880 kB diskettes.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault 1994



Team 17 released Alien Breed: Tower Assault for the Amiga ECS/OCS and AGA in 1994. Alien Breed: Tower Assault was programmed by Stefan Boberg, drawn by Tony Senghore and composed by Allister Brimble.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault supports M-key map activation, Space-key Intex log-on, Shift-key retreat mode, Alt-key weapon-cycling, single-player or 2-player coop, individual or shared credits, normal or tough difficulties, save/load Hiscores and level codes.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault consists of 50 stages of varying map sizes.

Stats recorded include player points, credit limit, aliens killed, shots fired, doors opened.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 3x 3.5" 880 kB diskettes.

***

[1] ASM-One MC68000 Macro Assembler of 1990 by Rune-Gram Madsen aka Promax of Denmark.

Team 17's Alien Breed could have been influenced by Pandora's Into the Eagle's Nest of 1987.


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