Alien Vs. Predator is one of the greatest exponents of a genre that returns with Streets of Rage 4
Since we have known her, Capcom has always been a company of moments of inspiration. He has always aspired to the maximum until he found it, sometimes, based on streaks in which things go well regardless of the genre he plays. The first nineties were like this for Capcom, but the fame of its fighting games has relegated to some extent the prestige that other games had then with its label. It is true that fashions and the evolution of some genres influence this issue a lot, but the reality is that the succession of outstanding proposals that followed in the wake of the immortal Final Fight are not remembered with the same insistence of fighting games. Despite the fact that the Beat'em Up is no longer carried, Capcom is very aware that it has a treasure to preserve in that genre, since it sells it from time to time without those of us who lived at that time being fully satisfied with what is offered to us. That being the case, if anything caught the eye in the last attempt it was the absence of a title like Alien Vs. Predator, one of the most perfect of its kind that stayed out of the Capcom Beat ‘em Up Bundle.
It is evident that the presence in the game of the two most popular monsters of action and fantasy cinema invites us to think that it was a question of rights rather than a malicious omission, but the truth is that Alien Vs. Predator continues to lead the Capcom dark titles list. Something that does not seem to stop appearing to be a real outrage as soon as we enter the game with today's eyes, which only confirm what we saw years ago. Everyone who played it in his day knows perfectly well that he was none other than one of the best Beat’em Up in the studio who best understood this genre, at its highest level. It is, for today's players who frequently look to yesterday, one of the mandatory games before facing in a few weeks the twist to the genre that the expected Streets of Rage 4 will propose.
We already know the peculiarity of the moment in which Capcom decided to make the jump to its CPS-2 plate within this genre of mass fights in the middle of the street. Although the three-dimensional was already commanding, the expectation that these games generated was still great, so Capcom donned its best clothes to make clear a message to its competitors: that there was nothing they could do to unseat it in this type of games . Snk, Sega, Taito, Video System and others tried again and again, but they did not even come close to a Capcom that had not accommodated at all after previous street brawls. It should be remembered in this sense that both Final Fight and The Punisher, Warriors of Fate or Cadillac and Dinosaurs would still be regular titles of the salons until the end. Even compared to its predecessors, this Alien Vs Predator contained enough new features to reinvigorate the genre for the second half of the nineties, which it did on the way to becoming one of its definitive titles. A resounding proposal built on two ingredients that worked perfectly: on the one hand, the extra technical boost of the new plate, a CPS-2 that provided an extra gasoline that was needed; on the other, some ideal characters for a Beat ‘em Up, which Capcom knew how to model with the precision of the goldsmith who knows what he plays.
A budding franchise
Alien, Predator and the humans of the Weyland-Yutani corporation had already been biting and acid-tossing for space in 1994, although in Europe we had not finished finding out since the Dark Horse comics were not so popular in these neighborhoods. On the other hand, and despite the fact that it was already one of the benchmark companies in the world of video games, Capcom at the time was going through a certain process of updating the aesthetics of its 2D games, seeking that visual point that should bring them closer much more to comics and animation. Recall, at this point, that X-men Children of the Atom and Darkstalkers are from the same year 94, and that the first Street Fighter Alpha would be released a few months later. Legend has it that the agreement between Capcom and the owners of the two alien monsters supposed that this game would accompany the first film based on the franchise, but the thing was delayed a decade in terms of the film debut of the saga. Capcom thus found a video game that ended up coming out on its own, but which managed very well as the first brick of a building that would later cover many other genres.
Assorted characters, alien replayability
It is the four main characters that make Alien Vs. Predator one of the best brawlers ever. Two humans and two Yautja (we would learn to call these bugs that way) who distance themselves from each other in the playable much more than it seems at first glance, but also offered nuances in their behavior as they faced other humans or to aliens. In Capcom they had already experimented with the use of firearms in other Beat’em Up, but this time they finished perfecting it adapting it to each character. This was achieved by equipping the characters of the cannon that all Predators carry clinging to their shoulder, and letting Marines Linn Kurosawa and Doug Schaeffer, two of Capcom's best designs, carry their weapons at all times. She was the typical female character of the Capcom of the time, as fast and light as less forceful than her companions in the short distance, while with him we were before the heaviest protagonist of the game who also followed all the clichés: the power of huge fire and the vulnerability of all slow characters.
On the Yautja side there was a little less variety, but we felt the same fun at the controls: a little more precision for the Predator Warrior's spear, a bit more brutality for the Predator Hunter, two characters in which Capcom returned to meeting a small gesture that was going to change many things. We had already seen in the cinema that these monsters were able to jump several meters, so someone must have thought that this ability could be the one that triggered the most fun and powerful attacks of these two characters, in what came to be a new gesture. for the genre: the high jump that propels us from one corner to another of the screen. Capcom's other classic moves in the genre were not overly altered, with the exception of a Dough Schaeffer who only jumped in his special moves, but the step forward compared to previous brawlers was really important thanks to these well-implemented innovations. Incorporations among which floated another mechanic that worked perfectly: that of the recovery time of each character's weapons, which provided each of them with very different strategies for the most advanced players, and which now makes it a title much more replayable than some of its cousins.
More power = more fun
You have to go back to 1994 (and in the battles for the dominance of hardware) to put in context the most important advance that this game introduced in its genre. As outstanding as they may seem, it is fair to admit that Capcom games in this genre were beginning to be compromised by the power of the system that hosted them, a CPS1 that was beginning to suffer before a Neo-Geo that was technically launched at these heights of battle. With its new CPS2 board, Capcom knew how to correctly read this limitation (which was shown in the limited number of characters on the screen) to turn the matter almost completely.
We all remember how in the colossal 1986 Aliens, colonial marines faced veritable Xenomorphic floods. Thanks to the extra power, the characters of this Alien Vs. Predator were able to face a concentration of enemies that we had not seen in another Beat ‘em up, giving the game a much more interesting rhythm. This time we would finally face real waves of aliens, in a true display of means that would have made the fat drop to the 32-bit consoles, if this game had been brought to those systems. The xenomorphs had differentiated behaviors based on patterns already seen in this genre, but the juiciness of their number and the fact that we also faced rebellious humans were a success that distinguishes this game from the entire school that its ancestors form. Those humans, by the way, were much less resistant than the xenomorphs, but they abused all kinds of weapons to lower our energy bar in a few seconds. Hence those nuances among the species involved that we referred to earlier.
A reissue … in a quarter of a century
Alien Vs. Predator topped the list of Capcom games crying out for a reissue until very recently, and still does so in a way. That strange experiment called Capcom Home Arcade needed something special to justify its high price, so Capcom did not hesitate to renegotiate the rights of Alien and Predator (which should not be cheap) to finally reissue this great video game. Playing it again, looking at all the good that was done in it, leads us to want to see it back in some more mainstream system, even if that means buying another imperfect compilation. While we wait for that occasion, it will be the unofficial preservation that allows us to enjoy a resounding game in everything that was proposed but that never came to any other system than recreational ones. A visually splendid title, with moments of true virtuosity in terms of the design of its models, both in terms of number and size. The confrontation with Queen Alien in the fourth level is a perfect example of how Capcom was playing with resources that he had never had in the genre at a technological level, already having the necessary experience to produce an almost round game in the genre, al that Capcom would return on rare occasions. Other attempts by the company in the genre such as Cyber Bots (from 1995) would not even come close to this level of quality, and the next one outside the Dungeons and Dragons saga (Battle Circuit, 1997) was still a long way off in time. . Alien Vs. Predator is, in short, one of those titles that have had less recognition after the event than their level deserves, first damaged by the decline of the arcades and then for all these years without reissues. Powerfully audiovisual and refined like very few in its genre, this game is one of the best of the Capcom of the nineties in its arcade aspect, which is not exactly a small thing. Despite this, its developer is the same company that forces us to use an emulator if we want to replay it from time to time.
