Alien 8
Hey Ultimate! Wait...where's Sabreman? What is this thing and why am I on a spaceship?
The year is 1985 and this is Alien 8 by Ultimate and this little chap is an ALIEN8 cybot, charged with keeping this spaceship going while travelling through hyper-warp. But now it's slowed down aliens are attacking and this little guy has to fix everything. Basically it's Knightlore in space. Wander around using those lovely isometric controls, collect things, put them in the correct sockets before the time runs out. At least that is what the instructions tell me. In reality I just trundled round exploring, trying to find rooms I could get past.
I'll admit freely to not liking Knightlore, I found the controls difficult, Sabreman changing between wolf and man was a pain in the neck and the way different items acted towards you depending on whether you were man or wolf was just very frustrating. (There , it had to be said!) So I was a little surprised when I loaded this game up and found I didn't have the same feelings towards it that I had for Knightlore . Perhaps it was because there was no changing into a wererobot, or was it because I wasn't playing a character I was used to in 2D? Either way I found this game very interesting (still very tricky though!)
Part of the affection for this game I think stemmed from the design of that little robot. I was obsessed with robots as a child and would watch anything on kids TV with them in. One of my favourite cartoons at the time was a Filmation cartoon called The Space Sentinels and I have to say that their robot 'Moe' reminded me quite a lot of the robot in this game. It was another case of the imagination of the player creating a completely different plot for the game.
I was no longer trundling around in hyper-warp but trundling around the Sentinel's spaceship hidden in a volcano. I'm pretty certain I never found and inserted a single object in this game, but that was okay, the graphics and the different rooms were enough to keep me interested. Plus the robot's movement seemed to be more suited to the isometric controls , or perhaps I was finally getting the hang of them. There is something about those hexagon walls that made the game seem even more 3D than Knightlore had. Oh no, Ultimate had started to win me over with their modern games.
Over the years I went back to this game quite a few times, each time it seemed I was at a different part of my exploration of science-fiction. When I first discovered ZX Spectrum emulation I had started discovering Blake's 7 , those hexagons reminded me of The Liberator from that show, later on I discovered the film 'Silent Running' and the Alien8 Cybot reminded me of Dewey , Huey and Louie. It was a game that seemed to be able to be adapted to where-ever my imagination wanted to go.
So did I ever finish the game, did I ever insert a single object? Did I in fact just leave the crew to be attacked by aliens in favour of roaming around the ship to try and find an easy room I could achieve? Well , yes.
But I think that there are the games you play to finish and the games you play to explore and to give your imagination a holiday !
But I think that there are the games you play to finish and the games you play to explore and to give your imagination a holiday !