We are joined by Mike Diver, the author behind the upcoming book, Aliens: The Video Games: An Unofficial Guide. Releasing in August 2026 from White Owl, Mike’s book is a passion project that meticulously chronicles the decades-long history of the Alien and AVP franchises in the gaming space.
In this interview, we dive deeply into Mike’s personal journey with the franchise, the challenges of getting developers to open up about behind-the-scenes secrets, and his thoughts on the most under-appreciated Alien games ever made. You can watch the full video discussion below, which covers gaming in the franchise more broadly, or read on for a transcription where we have highlighted Mike’s specific comments regarding the making of his book. Please note that the accompanying transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Early Encounters and Alien 3 Memories
Adam Zeller: Who are you, Mike, and tell us a bit about this project you have coming out shortly?
Aliens: The Video Games
Mike Diver: Yes, absolutely. Aliens: The Video Games is the very straightforward, straight-to-the-point title of the book. As you say, it is unofficial, so it is not like Fox, Disney, or various other publishing IP holders have given it any seal of approval. So it managed to go into lots of little avenues of exploration and speak to a lot of people who worked on the games without having to go through various PR channels and approvals.
It is coming out in August 2026, but you can pre-order it now on various online bookshops. I am sure you can think of a few. And the publisher itself, White Owl, has it on their website now, which is probably the cheapest place to get it. All of that promotional stuff out of the way, the book itself is very much a passion project. I have great affection for a few Alien games, particularly around Alien 3, which we will discuss a bit later on.
I just thought, why only focus on that for an article somewhere when this book does not exist in the world? I have written five books prior to this one, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. As you say, it has got all the AVP games in it as well. All official AVP games, all official Alien games, lots of unlicensed games, lots of unofficial games, a few fan games, and cancelled games along the way. And then a few inspired-by-Alien bits in there.
I try to cover as many bases as I can while giving the really important games enough space to breathe with good interview content. But it is a book, right? The completionists listening will probably notice it is missing a random weird online game from ten years ago that I might not have seen, or did not have the page space or word count for. But I am pretty happy with how it turned out and so far, people who have seen it are like, “Yes, it is a good one.”
Adam Zeller: Aaron and I had a chance to take a look at it. I think it is a really good chronicle of the history of these games. We have some younger fans who may be just getting interested in these franchises and I think it is good to have a resource where you can just see in one place the decades-long history of these franchises in the space of gaming.
Aaron Percival: I really enjoyed it. At the end of it, as you were doing all the AVP stuff, I was like, I do not remember so many of these web games that you had started chronicling. It brought back some real memories, like the Rampage one. Delving a bit more into the background of them was one of the things I really enjoyed because I find it really difficult to get people to open up about video games nowadays. So it was thrilling to see the access that you got and to get that sort of background and more insight into so many of the games. It was fantastic.
As Adam said, the website’s foundation is in video games. A large part of my early investment in the franchise was through the video games as well, so it has a really important part in my fandom background. This is a book that has been needed for a while, and I am glad it is finally here, Mike. I really enjoyed it.
Mike Diver: I am glad. I really enjoyed writing it. I tend not to do books that I do not enjoy the subject matter of, otherwise it would not be a lot of fun for me. This one in particular was really fun to dive into. On the access and stuff, there are over 24 brand new interviews in there, threaded between the chapters. And then there is a lot of archive stuff in there from previous interviews.
But I did run into a lot of brick walls as well. There were people who just ended up ghosting me, did not get back to me, said they would contribute and then didn’t. Or I just ran into a PR person who would say, “Oh yes, we will find whoever will speak to you about this,” and then you come back two weeks later and they are like, “No, they will not speak to you about this.”
I can assure you there could have been more in there. If ever a day arises where I get the opportunity to revisit this book and expand it, I know who I will be chasing again to get in there. I was quite happy with who I got, or more specifically, the games I got the interview content with.
Adam Zeller: What was your first encounter with the franchises?
Mike Diver: It is kind of a film, but it is more of a book. When I was in junior school, let’s say I would have been about eight or nine, I used to sometimes stop off on the way home from school and go and see a friend who lived a few roads away. His dad had what I believe was called The Movie Novel of Alien, which is lots and lots of photographs. So it tells the story of Alien, but I do not think it has words in it; it is just literally following it along.
So it has got the Nostromo and the big refinery behind it on the cover. That was my first exposure to it. I remember looking through that several times when I would visit Tom’s house. When I went to Tom’s house to play on the NES or whatever, he was the only child in my class who had an NES. Other people had Spectrums, Amigas, maybe Master Systems, but he had an NES, so he had Zelda. His dad had this book. So that was it. The images that stay with you. Obviously, it has got the chestburster in it, but just the look of it, that hard, “are these things made out of Lego bricks” quality to some of the chunky retro-futuristic design. My preteen brain did not understand exactly what it was in terms of an aesthetic, but I just knew I liked it.
Off the back of that, getting into the early nineties, I was in senior school then, and you had Alien 3 coming out in the cinemas. That is when the video game connection is made because I read a lot of Sega magazines. I had a Master System, then I had a Mega Drive. So Genesis in the US, obviously. I would be reading the magazines a lot, either buying them with my pocket money or just reading them in the newsagents until the owner kicked me out. I would see Alien 3 for Sega with the side-scrolling, rescue the prisoners, shoot the aliens before the timer runs out, and they all go boom and the chestbursters come out of them. So I managed to get that on the Mega Drive.
I really loved it. I got really frustrated; it is a hard game. You will get through maybe the first couple of levels without a guide. I used a guide back in the days when the guide was basically the maps of the levels printed out on a page, so you could see where all the prisoners were. Great stuff. Off the back of that, of course, I knew the Alien 3 movie was coming out, and that game did not give you a good idea of what Alien 3 would be. Somewhere along the line, I also watched Aliens around about the same time because I was really into this game. I asked my mum if we could tape this movie. I got up the next morning, watched it at 6:00 AM, and was just riveted by it. Loved it.
That aligned a lot more with what Alien 3, the video game, was. And then when I got to watch Alien 3, the movie, a couple of years later on VHS, I always quite liked it. I never really got the hate for it, but I could see it was a very, very different film. So that original trilogy is my entry point, but from different angles of approach.
Adam Zeller: So were those your first Alien games? Those early side-scrolling Alien 3 ones?
Alien 3 – SNES
Mike Diver: Yes, Alien 3 on the Mega Drive. I think I had it on Mega Drive before Master System, but I do have both now. They are essentially the same game, same structure. There are a few different versions of that Probe Software-made Mega Drive game. It is on Commodore 64, and it is on NES as well. But the Super Nintendo version I played quite a bit as well, with the same friend whose dad had the book. He has quite a connection to Alien as well. I remember him getting Alien 3 on the SNES, which came out the next year in 1993, and being quite obsessed with that for a period.
The way that had gone from this against-the-clock, save all the prisoners, to a slightly more methodical, almost Metroidvania-esque explorer, where you had to map your path to the next place and sometimes you might be welding a pipe. That is not very exciting, but it is the job you have to do while there are also hundreds of creatures running around. Because again, it couldn’t just have one alien. None of the Alien 3 games has just one alien because that wouldn’t be much of a game. I know Alien: Isolation exists, but it didn’t at the time. I think there is a great game to be made of Alien 3 in the style of Isolation.
Adam Zeller: What’s your favourite version of Alien 3?
Mike Diver: I mean, of the four, let’s say distinct experiences. I know that let’s say Mega Drive to encapsulate all of the prisoner-saving side-scrolling ones, and the SNES one. I know they are both side-on action games essentially, but I think the SNES does edge the Mega Drive one for atmosphere, for accuracy. This is a very loose accuracy, but accurate to the movie. It does end with a Queen Alien being pushed into a furnace, which is there or thereabouts, and in fact it ends with your Ripley falling into the furnace as well, which is something none of the other Alien 3 games does.
Alien 3: The Gun – Arcade Machine
I mean, Alien 3: The Gun doesn’t even have Ripley in it. But Alien 3: The Gun is definitely the most fun. But if I am going to play one of these games right now, I mean to be fair, I have got half an hour to kill. That is the one I am putting on, slightly naughtily, downstairs in my little games room via emulation means because I do not have Alien 3: The Gun in my basement as much as I would love to. I play it like a lot of people would have to play it these days. But that is just such a good game, such a fun, silly game.
I love it. You are just a basic-ass grunt marine. We are on the Sulaco again because, of course, you are, why wouldn’t you be? Why wouldn’t that Sulaco be absolutely rammed to the gills with eggs everywhere? Do not question it, just go with it. But if you have got time on your hands and the means to play it, the SNES one is, I think, really, really immersive, very engaging in a way that probably the other two aren’t. The Game Boy version has a lot of merits going for it. Like, it is a bit like 1987’s Aliens, the computer game, inasmuch as if you do not know what you are doing, you get lost pretty quickly. But if you work it out, if you stick with it, if you read a few guides, then that is pretty rewarding as well. And it is pretty much like the work of two or three people. But yes, The Gun for fun, SNES for atmosphere, Game Boy for the weird one.
Adam Zeller: Is there one game you would say has impacted you more than the rest now that you have played a whole lot more than those early ones?
Mike Diver: I do not know, really. Outside of the ones I played first, that obviously set the gears twirling in terms of affection for the series en masse, I think professionally. I went to see Alien: Isolation when it was being demoed at Creative Assembly. They sat us down in a dark room, and you could not see what was behind you. There was actually a guy behind me who scared the hell out of me at one point because I had forgotten he was there, and you have got headphones on.
Amanda Ripley – Alien: Isolation
In terms of taking what had for quite a long time become an action-oriented series back into horror, it was amazing. In the movies, if you just run up to one of these things, you are going to die. The games give you that power trip, that rush of being the hero, and obviously, Alien: Isolation strips that all away from you. It does not even give it to you in the first place to strip it away. You are completely out of your depth from the start.
So I think in terms of impact, it left me thinking that this is an IP that game developers are taking really seriously. Not that there were no good games before that. Aliens: Infestation on the DS is a great game. Aliens vs. Predator from 2010, the Rebellion game for consoles, was a very good game. I do not know about great, but it has lasted pretty well. The campaigns are fun, and it still supports multiplayer in some capacities. But seeing Alien: Isolation running at Creative Assembly, and seeing how proud people there were of it. They knew they had made something really special. Even for them, bearing in mind that it is a Total War studio, and their game before Alien was a Viking hack-and-slash game. They had no pedigree in horror, let alone the sci-fi worlds, either.
So, it was a perfect moment of all these things going right. In terms of leaving an impression, definitely that. You see that in later games, too. Aliens: Dark Descent is a completely different game, but it plays on that horror of being caught out, of being trapped, of being underprepared, and all you can do is hide. Even when you are a little group of Marines, you are at a disadvantage. It does not matter how much flamethrower fuel you have; they will keep coming until they don’t.
Or rewinding further, a game I didn’t play in the eighties, but a game I played around the writing of this book, the 1987 UK version of Aliens. The way that it does a first-person horror experience with side-scrolling, so you look around the room, and the noises it makes when there is an alien in the room, really sets you on edge. That is a surprisingly effective jump-scare sort of game that you can play on a Spectrum or a C64. Absolute credit to that game as well.