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If you've ever seen the 1986 movie, Aliens, by Director James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, then Aliens: Neoplasma will be instantly recognizable to you. It brings together the best qualities of the Aliens movie into an extraordinary 128kb game. This one player sci-fi shoot 'em up, adventure, is one of the best games you will play on any 8-bit platform in 2019.

Aliens: Neoplasma was developed by the SaNchez coding team especially for entry into the 2018 ZX-DEV M.I.A Remakes competition. Receiving 13,120 points by the judges, it took home first place to beat all the other twenty entries in this fantastic ZX Speccy game development contest.

In 2018, the SaNchez coding team won first place in the ZX DEV conversions contest with the entry of Mighty Final Fight. They have been profilic game developers for the ZX Spectrum since 2012. Other games SaNchez group are credited with for the Spectrum include: Asteroid 512 (2012), Survivisection (2012), Castlevania: Spectral Interlude (2015) and Vradark's Sphere (2018). The games they have made have seen them establish and build a very good reputation.

You play a Lieutenant known as Ashley Smith on board the spaceship Achilles.

As you progress through your spaceship, there are computer terminals to interact with that give you messages from the on-board navigation system that generally help you find your way around the spacecraft. However, it is solely up to you to rid the giant aliens and their annoying face hugger siblings from the decks of the Achilles, allowing you to escape safely. You do so by running, jumping, crawling and climbing through each of the flip screens that you uncover. It's shoot (to kill) first and ask questions later in this gripping platformbased run and gun survival game.

Collecting health packs is essential to escaping and so too is collecting lots of ammo to load up your rifle. There are ammo stations scattered around the decks of the ship allowing you to load up and go gun crazy when you encounter an alien. You can also throw grenades at aliens before they get near, sending your enemies to a gruesome death.

The game resembles Alien³ by Acclaim which was released for 16-bit consoles in 1993. There are two different endings - a good ending and a bad ending. If you have seen the Aliens movie and are an avid multi platform gamer, you will feel instantly aware of the plot and gameplay of Aliens: Neoplasma. It has many similarities with a few minor changes.

The atmosphere is brilliant. The eerie sounds are really frightening. In fact, they're scary! The pulsating soundtrack brings with it a sense of urgency and adrenalin. The graphics are incredible. Animation and sprite movement is just so smooth. The playing area looks fantastic. It's a great simulation of running, crawling and climbing inside a spaceship. The colours used work well, adding a great feel to playing the game. The size of the sprites in particular, your character and the Aliens are huge.

I like the way it heightens all your senses, in particular the feeling of danger signals going off in your brain. A multitude of various weapons and blowing up aliens looks so damn fantastic! and the opening and closing of the doors adds more to the strategy of the gameplay than you realize.

The game has a high degree of difficulty for beginners but I feel that more experienced gamers will feel right at home with the difficulty level. Beginners may feel like they are going around in circles at times, I certainly felt like that when I began playing.

Some may feel the background colours and your character sprite clash making it hard to see your character at times, but really there isn't a whole lot to dislike. The facehugger attacks are probably the biggest annoyance of the game.

Aliens: Neoplasma is a very worthy winner of the 2018 ZX-DEV M.I.A Remakes competition. A wonderfully atmospheric, pulse pumping run and gun adventure, ticking all the right boxes to be one of the best games of 2019. With brilliant graphics and tunes, this is a sci-fi adventure gaming classic of its time.