In this Beat ‘Em Up Renaissance, Why was Aliens Vs. Predator Left For Dead?

In this Beat ‘Em Up Renaissance, Why was Aliens Vs. Predator Left For Dead?

A relic from the kid-friendly era of Xenomorph/Youtja adventures.

For a long time, people guessed that rights issues prevented Capcom from porting their past collaborations with Marvel to modern consoles. Games like The Punisher, X-Men: Children of the Atom, and of course Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 seemed lost to licensed game history—until recently, when the publisher released them all on their Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics compilation.

But wait a minute, doesn’t Disney own the Aliens and Predator franchises now, too? In fact, aren’t they having both of those slaughter-loving aliens fighting their roster of superheroes on the regular in the comics these days? If so, why the heck didn’t they stick classic Capcom beat ’em up Aliens Vs. Predator on there, too?!

Sure, we can always guess that “licensing” got in the way, that the deal that made this game possible was made before Disney acquired those intellectual properties and muddied their access to them. But c’mon, now. Disney could make this happen if they wanted to. In fact, they did! For a short run of Capcom plug-and-play consoles back in 2019… but not in the United States or Japan. So we can only guess that they just don’t understand the goodwill goldmine they’re sitting on here.

Since it’s so hard to come by these days, you may not be familiar with what makes Aliens Vs. Predator so fantastic. Unlike the movies and comic series of the same name, there’s little in the way of gore or scares in the game. Instead, it takes the general premise of Aliens (big corporations want to use parasitic aliens to their own ends, no matter who dies in the process) and Predator (some other aliens have shown up on Earth and like hunting the toughest things they can find) for a uses is as an excuse to let you kick the crud out of as many creatures as you can. First released in 1994, it felt more like playing the Aliens and Predator action figures that Kenner put out around that time than anything else. 

And it also felt like playing Street Fighter 2, which just about everyone had been doing back then. Not only was the art and animation in the game as good or better than anything you could find in a fighting game back then, but the character designs carried that special Capcom flavor that made the whole experience feel a little too good to be true.

You could play as a couple of Predators, which was fine. More importantly, Dutch from the original Predator had become a bionic commando of sorts… and there was a whole new fighter named Linn Kurosawa, who was so cool-looking that people have been obsessing about her ever since. She even got her own toy a few years back. 

So why hasn’t Disney allowed the game to be re-released? We can guess that, after the last Aliens Vs. Predator movie was such a disappointment, they decided to place their focus on re-establishing the voice and purpose of the separate Aliens and Predator franchises. Both the Disney+ Alien: Earth series and the recent film Predator: Badlands did a great job of that. And now that they’ve declared “mission accomplished,” it’s safe for Capcom’s Aliens Vs. Predator to come out of its stealth mode and burst on to the scene once again. Or better yet, could they greenlight a whole new game, like the one that River City Girls co-creators Bannon Rudis and Derek Liu were pitching not long ago?

Or maybe some DLC for an existing game would be a better way to test those waters? Marvel: Cosmic Invasion, a recent Aliens Vs. Predator-style beat ’em up, is all about fighting aliens, but none of the capital “A” aliens or capital “P” predators have popped in there. Yet. C’mon Marvel/Dotemu/Tribute, it’s not too late to let me rip and tear a xenomorph apart with Wolverine’s claws only to watch their acid blood melt the flesh off his adamantium bones. The kids will love it!  (And he’ll get better.)