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Activision are one of the few companies that have really made good off the backs of a film licence, namely Ghostbusters. Versions of which amazingly still continue to sell throughout the world. For Aliens the Activision overlords in sunny California decided that different games were needed to exploit the licence either side of the Atlantic.

So how does Aliens US-style compare with Activision's excellent and atmospheric domestic release? Whereas the European game is an arcade adventure, the American one is much more arcade oriented, although it contains some arcady sections.

The first, and most obvious, difference is that Aliens US is a multi-load, disk only product which reflects the market which is primarily aimed - most Yanks collapse into fits of apoplexy at the very suggestion of loading a game from a cassette!

The game is divided into an introduction, and six different games, each of which can be entered immediately by entering a codeword given when the previous section has been successfully completed. You can, though, get a taste of the other games by using the cheat mode but no final rating will be given if you succumb to this! While the game loads the credits appear on the screen in suitably movie-like fashion accompanied by the theme music from the film. Those people who did not see Alien are then given a brief resume of where the film ended and the sequel began. Then, after passing the weapon identification test, the first name, 'Drop-Ship manoeuvres' is loaded.

In the first game, you must guide your ship through an increasingly twisted corridor of hoops until Drop is achieved. A 'Profile Compliance Indicator' will tell you when you are getting off course. If the PCI goes into the red, the Drop is aborted and you must try again. For a first game in a series of six, this was perhaps rather too difficult.

In game two, four of the marines in your landing party are trapped in sub-level three of the Atmosphere Processor (AP) and you've got to get them back to the relative safety of the Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) - like now! Each marine can be moved around the AP which is seen in side view location by location. Each location has between two and four exits depending on whether it's a corridor or bend, a T junction or a cross-roads. When aliens are near, the upper portion of the screen becomes agitated and you know to expect trouble any second. When the aliens get into the same location as you, there is no escape until you have polished them all off - a rewarding, if messy, task.

Although part two is similar, in many ways, to the European game, the remaining four are substantially different, although not necessarily original in their own right. Part three, 'The Operations Room Rampage', finds our heroes cornered in the OR with one last hope of escape, if you can hold off hordes of marauding aliens long enough for the others to cut a hole in a two ton steel door. The aliens drop through the ceiling and rush at your from left to right across the screen. By moving your sprite up and down the right hand edge of the screen you can liquidate the little darlings before they can slip past you and grab one of your pals.

Once a hole has been blasted in the operations room door, it's on to the 'Air Duct Scramble' which can best be described as a double-decker Pacman derivative in which you must find your way from the Operations Room to the Drop-Ship landing field. This plan view maze game differs from Pacman insofar as some tracks pass over or under other ones giving the game a maze-like quality. This means that you may be right next to the exit but on the wrong track, and thus unable to reach it without going way back towards the Operations Room.

Safely back in the Drop-Ship landing field, and with only seventeen minutes before the whole planet becomes nuclear history, it becomes apparent that there is one human survivor left on the planet. Sensors are picking up the life readings of a little girl, called Newt, who is somewhere in the Atmosphere Processor. The penultimate game involves the location and rescue of Newt by Ripley, leader of the landing party. The screen display is similar to the other game set in the AP, but this time you only control one character so all the other bio-displays etc are replaced by ammo, flare, and time readings. Flares can be dropped at key locations to mark your course, while the ammo display tells you how many of your original 99 shots remain.

In this final encounter, you don the power-loader, a robotic exoskeleton that works a little like a forklift with two enormous mechanical claws. These claws can be manipulated in all directions using the joystick. Each time you hit the queen with the claws, the green scroll bar at the bottom of the screen indicated how much damage you have inflicted. When the bar is fully green, you will be able to pick up the dead queen and dump her in the airlock. If, however, she succeeds in getting to the bottom of the screen before this time, it's curtains and all your efforts will have been in vain.

Although no one of the six games in Aliens US Version is as involved or challenging as the single game in the European version, as a collection on one disk there is sufficient variation, challenge, and gameplay, to keep most gamers happy and frustrated for many a long night.