This Week In Retro: Area 51 (1995) (Patreon)

November 1995: C'MON! STAY LOW!

by Diamond Feit

ALIENS.

In my humble, non-scientific opinion, aliens exist. I don't know where they spend their time, I don't know what they look like, but I refuse to believe we occupy the sole planet in the universe capable of supporting life. To me, it's a question of mathematics: With an infinite number of planets orbiting an infinite number of stars in an infinite number of galaxies, whatever circumstances that led Earth to develop into its current state must have occurred elsewhere.

Sadly, my limited understanding of mathematics also suggests that we may never meet any aliens in our lifetime as a species. If our universe truly is infinitely large, that's a lot of distance to traverse. I've written much about Star Trek in these pages and on that show with space-faring civilizations traveling at fantastical Warp Speed, leaving the Milky Way still proves too difficult.

Do the near-impossible odds of actually meeting extra terrestrials fuel our collective interest in stories about them? Perhaps there's a forbidden fruit element to the matter; many people fervently believe that aliens are real and they've already visited Earth but powerful forces conspire to conceal their presence. Whether you subscribe to the cover-up angle or you just marvel at the idea of more life out there, you've got plenty of pop culture options catering to your needs. 

When video games first crept into the mainstream in the 1970s, the young medium immediately latched onto spaceships and aliens. Early titles such as Computer Space, Starship 1, and of course Space Invaders asked the question "would you like to shoot down flying saucers" and millions of people responded with "shut up and take my money."

There's little room for subtlety in arcades so none of these initial efforts tapped into any conspiratorial angles but in time, video games embraced pulling back the curtain on our shadowy overlords. Indeed, this week we celebrate the anniversary of one such game that, while breaking no new ground, managed to tap into the zeitgeist at precisely the right moment. 30 years ago this month, Atari Games invited players on a guided tour of a top-secret military base in the hit arcade shooter Area 51.

I wish I could tell you where I first heard the words "Area 51," an isolated location in Nevada that somehow became Ground Zero for UFOlogy. It could have been in a random reader sitting in my middle school or maybe I heard about it on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Regardless of the when or the how, I already knew what Area 51 meant when I first saw it on an arcade marquee in 1995.

Yet Area 51 delivers enough information in its attract mode to clue in unfamiliar spectators about the nature of the game. On-screen text says "A crashed alien probe is recovered and taken to a top secret military installation in the remote Nevada desert: >> AREA 51 <<" over fuzzy images of bright lights falling towards the horizon. A red CONFIDENTIAL stamp appears atop each page of the briefing, ramming home to potential players that this game takes you places the government doesn't want you to see. As a member of S.T.A.A.R. ("Strategic Tactical Advanced Alien Response") you and your squadmates must "penetrate the >> AREA 51 << complex" where the visiting team has already seized control.

Area 51 is a classic on-rails shooter where the only inputs come from the barrel of a plastic gun; shoot the bad guys before they shoot you and try not to hit any friendlies on the battlefield. Power Up icons and ammo depots increase your firepower but taking any damage resets your weapon to the default pistol. Collectible grenades damage everything on screen when shot.

Every playthrough of Area 51 follows the same path and enemy spawn points never change. Some attacks like missiles or thrown barrels can be destroyed in mid-air but the best strategies rely on memorization and quick reflexes. The longer players survive, the harder the game works to hurt you, eventually reaching a point where even seeing an entire monster pop into view means you're already hit.

Like a lot of early 90s games, Area 51 uses digital trickery to overcome technical hurdles. Since the route through the base never changes, the 3D backgrounds and all camera movements are pre-rendered, reducing processing power. Interactive elements exist on a superimposed layer of 2D sprites. This uncanny combination helps potential targets stand out visually; if something looks like it might react to bullets, you should shoot it. In a 2017 Retro Gamer magazine feature on the making of Area 51, producer Rob Rowe boasted about these time and money-saving techniques. "We fooled people into thinking it was 3D, when in fact we were streaming layers of 2D movies," he said. "We were competing with Time Crisis but our game cost $2,500, not $20,000."

Digitized images of every character in the game also added to Area 51's distinct aesthetic; real people wearing faux-S.W.A.T. uniforms played the heroic S.T.A.A.R. members who storm the premises. Rowe took full credit for finding the live-action personnel, telling Retro Gamer "The main guy was Terry and I spotted him at a theme park…The female star was my neighbor, Kim, who had done a little modelling before."

The monsters, however, were brought to life by musician and animator "Sneaky Pete" Kleinow, renowned for his work with stop-motion. The first wave of hostiles look like zombies dressed in jumpsuits, presumably former crewmen now serving new masters. Bipedal alien hunters who walk upright but otherwise do not resemble humans dwell deeper inside the facility. Area 51 doesn't explain the biology of these creatures but if you run out of health and fail to continue, the Game Over sequence shows a S.T.A.A.R. member transform into the exact same monsters you've been fighting.

Compared to other light gun shooters like Terminator 2 or Revolution X, Area 51 demands far less from players. Most threats die with a single shot so the challenge lies in precision aiming to rack up bonus points via hit streaks. There are no branching paths to explore aside from the occasional secret room unlocked by destroying certain scenery. The only boss arrives in the game's finale, a flying saucer hovering in the background as alien hunters swarm the screen; failing to deal enough damage to the vessel before it zips away results in a less-congratulatory ending text crawl.

Area 51 absolutely exceeded expectations, delivering much needed revenue to the struggling arcade publisher Atari Games. In that same 2017 Retro Gamer piece, Area 51 lead designer Robert Weatherby boasts about its success, saying "At the time, the arcade business was in decline and a great game was selling anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 units. We sold over 20,000 cabinets!"

According to executive producer Mark Pierce, Area 51 almost flopped out of the gate during playtests in early 1995, telling Retro Gamer "During its first field test, we were shocked at how bad the results were." The team spent five months overhauling the game and the distinct cabinet before shipping nationwide in November that year; home ports followed in 1996. Pierce argues this single title became Atari's biggest breadwinner, saying "Area 51 not only had the immediate benefit of giving us $21 million in cabinet sales, it became a franchise…I think the home game even did about 250,000 units, which wasn’t bad for a gun game in a joystick world."

In the fall of 1995 I worked at the (now-defunct) All Westchester Saw Mill Multiplex in Hawthorne, New York, a lovely suburban movie theater with ample lobby space. From the moment it shipped, Area 51 occupied a corner of that lobby for many months—perhaps years—while Mortal Kombats and Daytona USAs came and went. A full playthrough of Area 51 only takes about 20 minutes, an ideal length for a break between showtimes. I don't know if I ever finished it on a single coin but I certainly got it down to less than a dollar.

Beyond my experience actually playing the game, Area 51 lives rent-free in my head due its sheer omnipresence during this era. Not only did I have to stand a few feet away from the cabinet five days a week selling tickets, I regularly saw Area 51 machines when I visited any other arcade or cinema or pizzeria. Every sound effect from the death cries of the aliens to the short audio sting that plays between stages remains etched in my brain three decades later.

Area 51 also lucked out in that it jumped aboard the "evil aliens" train right as that particular trope took off in pop culture. Not only was The X-Files a ratings success on television, but in 1996 Independence Day wowed movie audiences with shots of massive motherships flattening American cities and landmarks. A good chunk of the film even takes place inside a highly fictionalized version of the real Area 51—Robert Weatherby claims 20th Century Fox wanted to use that title "but we beat them to the trademark so they had to change their name!"

Ultimately, like Independence Day, Area 51's impact on pop culture had a short lifespan. Spiritual sequel Maximum Force ditched aliens for terrorists, followed by an actual sequel in 1998 called Area 51: Site 4, but neither of these titles matched the 1995 original in terms of longevity. A pair of console shooters in the early 2000s also failed to garner much interest. Despite periodic reports of Hollywood producing a feature film adaptation, the license seems long dead. The only Area 51 movie I can find came out in 2015, had no connection to any video games, and bombed at the box office.

While audiences remain open to stories about humans and aliens, at this point I don't know that there's anything more to say about Area 51 itself. After all that the United States has experienced in the last 20 years, does anyone sincerely believe our government has the capacity to sequester information about extra terrestrial life? The fact that we all carry pocket-sized computers that double as video cameras should make any cover-up concerning the skies impossible. 

Besides, if players out there have a hankering for aiming crosshairs at invaders from space, video games as a medium already has you covered. Entire franchises make it their business to churn out shooters where players must defend the Earth by force. Any project can safely include made-up aliens as antagonists without hesitation. They're a perpetual punching bag like zombies or Nazis—although in the right circumstances I am capable of feeling empathy for aliens and zombies.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.