The Attack Prototype from Milton
Bradley. Ah, one of the classic TI-99/4A games! Most of you out there
have probably played this one or remember someone at some point playing
it who had a TI system. Basically, the object of the game is to blast
orange aliens which can hatch out of black incubators once their
counter
reaches zero. In addition, harmless purple spores fly about the screen
which also must be gotten rid of, because when four gather they form
into an alien. It's a really entertaining game and another one of those
great releases from Milton Bradley.
The Attack has some interesting history behind it. According to two
different sources from Milton Bradley, the game was either to be a
tie-in with the 1979 Alien
movie, and therefore sold under the title Alien, or the original name
was to be Alien Attack and
due to legal reasons the name was changed to The Attack. Most likely
the former is correct, since Milton Bradley used licenses for its other
two 1980 releases (Hustle and Blasto, translations of Sega/Gremlin
arcade games) and the licensing of a movie would make sense in this
case. Also, there were games that used "Alien" in their titles for
other systems at the same time period and they never encountered
copyright problems.
The main thing that is different in the prototype version of The
Attack is the music at the beginning of the
game. The proto has creepier music, which would actually fit in with
the Alien movie well. Also,
the sound played when an alien appears is different and
goes good with the creepier music.
Intererstingly, the music that plays in the
background of the released
version of the game (not to be confused with the theme song which only
plays at the beginning of the game) retains the thumping/beating
that is present in
the prototype theme music, so Milton Bradley must have liked that part
of the
theme enough to use it as in-game music.
One other noticeable difference is the number of aliens that hatch
directly from the incubators in the harder levels. In the prototype,
only about half the time do aliens hatch directly from the incubators
on
the pro level of play (the other half of the time purple spores are
released). This is compared to what seems like 100% of the
time on the same level of play in the released version.
 CLICK
HERE TO LISTEN TO THE ORIGINAL PROTOTYPE THEME MUSIC
 CLICK
HERE TO LISTEN TO THE RELEASED CARTRIDGE'S THEME MUSIC
|