"I Just Wanna Know One Thing..."

Author Alec Worley has written a great article on the brilliance of the marines' briefing scene in James Cameron's Aliens, and why it works so well.

Check it out here.

Signing Off!

In a desperate attempt to focus my blogging activities into a single place (i.e. HeroPress), Game Over, Man! Game Over! is going into hypersleep.

However, rather than nuking it from orbit, this blog will remain here, although all the posts have now been exported over to HeroPress (my main blog), and future Alien-themed articles will simply be posted there.

Thus, for the time being, I invite anyone who has been following my occasional posts here to switch their attention to HeroPress, where they will encounter a broader range of geeky posts, but still with the elements of Alien goodness in there.

On the miniscule chance that I somehow get an Alien RPG game going - or even bust out my Aliens boardgame - then Game Over, Man! Game Over! might flicker back into life.

However, for the moment, it is, indeed, Game Over, Man! Game Over!

Super7 Expands Its Aliens Range Of ReAction Figures

A half-dozen new 3.75″ Aliens ReAction Figures will be available from Super7's online store next Wednesday (May 6): Ripley, Newt, Bishop, Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez.

Aliens: Theatrical Cut vs Special Edition

"Another Glorious Day in the Corps!"

Aliens: Another Glorious Day In The Corps! is a new co-operative, miniatures, boardgame from Gale Force 9, based on the battle of Hadley's Hope in James Cameron's seminal Aliens movie.

Originally scheduled for release any day now, in the current climate who knows when we'll actually get to see this in the wild!

This is definitely one to keep an eye out for.

Hopefully, we might hear something on, or around, Alien Day (April 26)

I can't help but be reminded of the incredible Leading Edge boardgame from back in the day, which I played the hell out of and then - for inexplicable reasons - sold, much to my enduring chagrin.

As that old game now commands seriously silly money on the secondary market, I guess it only makes sense to purchase this new game instead.

And it's got miniatures... and we all know my love of miniatures!

Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps! is a co-operative survival board game where you and your team of specialist Colonial Marines will gear up with serious firepower and head into Hadley's Hope to find survivors and answers.

But you're not alone. To survive, you'll need to work together, keep your cool, and stay frosty to fight off relentless Xenomorph ambushes and get out of there alive.

Players can play up to six different missions, taking them into different areas from the Hadley’s Hope terraforming facility to the deep, dark recesses of an xenomorph nest.

Aliens also offers an exciting campaign mode to play four of the missions linked together, so players will need to fight relentless xenomorph attacks and keep each other alive all the way to the end of the campaign.

The remaining two missions are purely about survival, it’s kill or be killed. The players are dropped into the game with nothing more than a pistol. They will need to scavenge weapons and gear while hordes of Xenomorph aliens are trying to get at them. How long can you survive against the odds?

Here's a first impressions video, of a prototype edition, from last year's Gen Con (and GF9 were already talking about expansions!!!):

What's In A Name?

Despite taking a tone that is both patronising and slightly condescending, this old article on Ars Tecnica raises an important point: the creatures faced by Ripley, the colonial marines et al are not actually called "xenomorphs".

That is simply another way of saying "alien life form"... or, as Hudson would have it, "bug".

The dialogue in Aliens also strongly suggests that that "Ripley's bad guys" are not the only alien species in the universe, it's just these are a previously unknown - and therefore unnamed - lifeform.

So, what do you call these creatures in your own headcanon? How are they referred to in your games?

"The species' binomial names are given in Latin as either Internecivus raptus (meant as "murderous thief") in the Alien Quadrilogy DVD or Lingua foeda acheronsis (meant as "foul tongue from Acheron") in some comic books... In The Weyland-Yutani Report, the Alien encountered by the Nostromo was specifically referred to as "Xenomorph XX121"."

- from Wikipedia

Alien: Alone

Featuring James Paxton, son of Bill 'Hudson' Paxton, who talks about his experiences on this short, his father, and other projects on the AvP Galaxy Podcast.