Did 'Alien' and 'Aliens' influence FPS interior games?

[jefferiestubes8]

Let's discuss the 1979 film "Alien" and 1986 "Aliens" and the interior corridor hallways of First-Person-Shooter games and influences. Not solely 'maze-based gameplay' but just interior corridor locations within FPS games.
Not vehicle simulation games but only FPS influences.

The first-person shooter has since been traced as far back as Maze War, development of which began in 1973, and 1974's Spasim.

1987's MIDI Maze for the Atari ST was one of the first network multiplayer action games and also saw release on game consoles. The genre coalesced with 1992's Wolfenstein 3D, which is generally credited with creating the genre proper and the basic archetype upon which subsequent titles were based.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_person_shooter

for reference see this 10 minute video
The History of FPS Games Vol 1 1974-1988
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aipGP5oAuWQ
It shows Akalabeth World of Doom (1979) at :30 which looks like the first interior corridor FPS to me. Refresh rates, color, 3-D Graphics aside this seems to be the first.
Alien came out in May 1979.

Sure Star Trek had corridor hallways with aliens on board the TOS Enterprise but not the same.

Akalabeth: World of Doom came out in 1979 with a limited release and wider release in 1980 and would have had a development period already while Alien was in production.

I would argue that Alien and more importantly Aliens (1986) set the overall tone for interior-based alien-enemy FPS. What do you guys think? Let's discuss the Alien franchise solely with FPS.
Can we keep the nostalgia factor of naming 20 other FPS games down?

 

[Lance]

IIRC, Doom was explicitly developed as a deliberate homage to Aliens, but evolved away from it. The very earliest concepts emphasised multiplayer co-operative gameplay, inspired by the bug-hunt in Aliens, and there were *no* outside areas at all (leading to a clasutrophobic feel). Only one or two stages in the finished game reflect this, in particular the one with all the crates -- is it E2M3? One of the earliest popular mods for the game was one which replaced all the sounds and graphics with those from Aliens.

A whole third of Duke Nukem 3D (the entire 'Lunar Apocalypse' episode) was pretty much used Aliens as a template for its level designs, and the Plutonium Pak expansion even went further by adding an Alien-esque xenomorph foe.

I'd say that Aliens had a huge influence of the stylistic aspects of many early FPSes.

 

[firehawk12]

Aliens definitely. Alien mostly manifests itself in games like Amnesia or Japanese survival horror games where there's typically one antagonist that is chasing a powerless player around.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Did Aliens influence FPS games?

About twice as much as the Pope has an interest in Catholocism, and Bears avoid indoor bathrooms!

 

[MacLeod]

Perhaps to a certain extend, but how may FPS pay homage to those films. Parts of the Halo universe seem to pay homage to Aliens.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I think Dungeons & Dragons might have more influence in that regard than Aliens. A lot of those early games are putting you in the dungeon in a first person perspective. Add to that that it is easier for 8-bit computers to render a corridor than some open world environment.

 

[Reverend]

Depends on the game to be honest. The early ones like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, System Shock 2 and even Half-Life were definitely drawing a lot of inspiration from various aspects of the Alien films, but I don't imagine they had much impact on many modern titles as they tend towards more "realistic" settings and enemies. Those probably owe more to Michael Bay films, Tom Clancy novels and armed forces recruitment videos.

Even so, it would be neither fair nor accurate to suppose that Alien and/or Aliens were the *sole* source of inspiration for early FPS games. An important distinction.