After CD-i member Erronous discovered Aliens Interactive CD-i for the first time in 2005 in a resume and posted it on the blog soon after, we've seen it on many places on the internet. The extra attention recently brought new scans by no other than Dave Dorman, who was overseeing the project.
Now some new details surfaced about the unreleased interactive game that was in development for a short period of 6 months by Dark Vision Interactive: Dave: “I was called in by Mike Richardson (head of Dark Horse Comics) in the summer of 1992 to produce production designs and physical art for an Alien DVD [Dave has since commented that he misremembered and it was CD-I format, not DVD) game produced by Dark Horse in collaboration with Total Vision. The game company was to be called Dark Division Interactive. Alien was to be their first game. Now remember this is 1992, before Xbox, PlayStation, or Game Box. I believe only Atari had a popular working game machine at the time. What Dark Vision wanted to was utilize the potential game playing power of the DVD player. Using the DVD hand controller and its buttons and cursor to move through the game and execute commands.”
Aliens Interactive, also known as Aliens Interactive CDI, was a working prototype for an unreleased interactive comic book game produced by Dark Vision Interactive and Dark Horse Comics for the Philips CD-i from 1991 to 1993. Artists Dave Dorman and Mike Richardson also worked on the game.
The game would have likely been similar to the Japanese game Golgo 13. Art from the game seems to indicate that it took inspiration from Aliens, featuring the Colonial Marines and Warrior Aliens, as well as Alien, featuring similar environments. A poster for the game indicates that there were plans to start something of a series following the game with other titles, including Predator.
"Erronous", a member of Interactive Dreams, discovered the game in 2005 in a resume of someone who worked on the project, and, on August 1, 2007, an article titled "Aliens Interactive - an unreleased comicbook on CD-i" was posted in the blog detailing the game.
Dave Dorman would have overseen the design aspects of the game. Games of a similar nature did indeed appear for the DVD players. The content provided to Jamie doesn’t reveal many details on the actual storylines. You would have chosen between 2 characters/stories, one of which was “crew-story” and an “explorer” storyline. One would have been a fast-paced approach whilst the other was “more educational”. The idea was that it would have been a complex story driven venture.
These shots are from Aliens: A Comic Book Adventure, published by Cryo. Aliens Interactive was based on this.
[Thanks, Dave Dorman, Jamie Warr, https://www.avpgalaxy.net, Xenopedia, Weyland Yutani Bulletin, Corporal Hicks]