Alien vs Predator (SNES video game)

Lore & Background

The game is set on the planet Vega 4 in the city of New Shanghai, where a work crew discovers a colony of Aliens that quickly overruns the city. Citizens send a distress signal to Earth, which is also received by a passing Predator ship; the Predators decide to hunt the Aliens as challenging prey. The player controls a Predator through six stages, fighting various types of Aliens and bosses, including aquatic, primate-like, winged, and snake-like Aliens gestated in different animals. The final stage takes place on the Predator ship, where the player battles the Alien queen.

Reader's Guide

Alien vs Predator for the SNES is significant as an early crossover video game between the Alien and Predator franchises, predating the later first-person shooter titles. It was developed by Jorudan, with Activision producer Tom Sloper overseeing creation, and featured a team including designers Mitoshi Asakawa and Y. Furusawa, programmers Fumihiro Sugiura, Yoshiaki Tejima, and Mitoshi Asakawa, and composer Tenpei Sato. The game received generally unfavorable reviews from critics. A planned port for the Atari Jaguar was considered but ultimately reworked into a first-person shooter, and conversions for the Sega Mega Drive and PC were developed by Realtime Associates but scrapped by Activision. The Japanese version, titled Aliens vs. Predator, includes gameplay differences such as a slower Predator with a run ability, an orange color, a shorter charging meter, and a two-player versus mode absent from the international release.

Did You Know?

• The game was released eight months before a different arcade game of the same title by Capcom, with unrelated storylines.
• Contrary to some claims, the Japanese version is a single-player game only and does not include a two-player versus mode.
• Ports for the Atari Jaguar, Sega Mega Drive, and PC were planned but ultimately cancelled.
• Boss enemies include Aliens gestated in a dolphin, ape, bat, and snake, each exhibiting characteristics of those animals.

Combat Mechanics & Stage Design

The SNES entry into the Alien vs Predator franchise takes the form of a side-scrolling beat 'em up, placing the player squarely in the role of a Predator stalking down waves of Xenomorphs across multiple stages. Core combat revolves around mowing through hordes of Aliens, but the game offers two signature tools that elevate the action. First, the Predator can slip into temporary invisibility, allowing tactical repositioning or a stealthy approach to tougher encounters. Second, the player can charge an energy weapon to devastating effect, unleashing a blast that wipes every enemy currently on screen in a single strike. The campaign spans six distinct stages, each populated with different Alien variants and culminating in a boss confrontation. What sets these bosses apart is their biological origin: each has gestated inside a different animal host, inheriting traits from that creature. An aquatic Alien bursts from a dolphin, a primate-like variant emerges from an ape, a winged form takes shape within a bat, and a serpentine Alien completes the roster of hybrid threats. The campaign's climax carries the Predator beyond Vega 4 into the Orion Nebula, where the Alien queen awaits as the ultimate adversary.

Narrative & World-Building

The story unfolds on Vega 4, a distant world whose surface hosts the sprawling metropolis of New Shanghai. The inciting incident is mundane until it isn't: a work crew drilling underground stumbles upon a dormant Alien colony. The Xenomorphs erupt in violence, slaughtering the crew and rapidly spreading to the city's surface, where they overwhelm the population. New Shanghai's survivors broadcast a desperate distress call back to Earth, and that signal is intercepted by a Predator vessel passing through the system. Rather than mounting a rescue, the Predators see the infestation as the perfect hunting ground—a fresh population of formidable prey on a remote planet. This framing gives the player a clear, self-serving motivation for the slaughter to come. The narrative follows a linear progression: six stages of escalating Alien encounters on Vega 4, each boss a grotesque hybrid born from a different animal host, before the final act transports the Predator to the Orion Nebula for a showdown with the Alien queen. Notably, this SNES storyline is entirely separate from the Capcom arcade game of the same name, which shipped eight months later and tells an unrelated story.

Development Team & Canceled Ports

Jorudan, a studio with prior credits on titles like Xardion and Musya, handled the core development of the SNES game under the watchful eye of Activision producer Tom Sloper. The design team included Mitoshi Asakawa and Y. Furusawa, while programming was split among Fumihiro Sugiura, Yoshiaki Tejima, and Asakawa himself. A large pixel-art crew—Hisaya Yabusaki, Yasuhiko Kikuchi, Kozo Igarashi, Nobuki Kimishima, Katsunori Nakabayashi, Mitsuru Ishida, Takanori Wada, and Y. Arai—crafted the visual presentation, and Tenpei Sato composed the soundtrack. Beyond the SNES cartridge, the project nearly expanded into a multi-platform franchise. In recent interviews, Rebellion Developments co-founder Jason Kingsley and former Atari producer James "Purple" Hampton confirmed that a Jaguar port was in the works. Hampton ultimately rejected the beat 'em up format, arguing it failed to capture the franchise's universe and characters, and resubmitted the project to 20th Century Fox and Activision as a first-person shooter instead. Meanwhile, Tom Sloper revealed that Realtime Associates was simultaneously developing conversions for the Sega Mega Drive and PC, but Activision scrapped both, dissatisfied with the quality of their production.

Regional Differences & Release Timeline

The game's journey to shelves was staggered across three regions. Information Global Service launched it in Japan on January 8, 1993, under the slightly different title Aliens vs. Predator. Activision then brought it to North America in September 1993 and to Europe in November of that year. The Japanese and international cartridges are not identical builds. In the Japanese version, the Predator moves at a slower base pace, but players can trigger a sprint by tapping the direction button twice, and the character wears an orange color scheme. The international build swaps this for a faster base speed with no sprint option, and the Predator's palette shifts to brown. The energy-weapon charging meter is shorter in the Japanese release, making the screen-clearing blast harder to land. Perhaps the most notable regional addition is a two-player versus mode exclusive to the Japanese cartridge, pitting one player's Predator against another player's Alien in direct combat. This mode was stripped entirely from the international releases. Combined with the separate Capcom arcade title that followed eight months later, no two players of "Alien vs Predator" in 1993 necessarily experienced the same game.

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