Alien Mind

Unlike PBI's previous efforts, Alien Mind demonstrated just how IIGS games should be done.

Programmed by Rob Karr and artwork by Matthew Crysdale, Alien Mind was a IIGS only game and it showed. The two disks the game came on had a custom operating system, for reasons of copy protection and super, super quick loading times (compare loading Alien Mind to say, Test Drive II).

Alien Mind involves the player as biologist and physicist Timothy Hunter, to take part in new research at the Zekford Space Station Laboratory with long time friend Aaron Avery. Aaron arrives first and sends you a telegram containing the exciting news that two alien eggs have been found in the nearby system, one of them showing signs of hatching...You arrive at the station to find everyone dead and you'll end up likewise unless you defend yourself. The alien did indeed hatch and displayed intelligence enough as a new-born to disable its captors, reprogram the security and maintenance robots to kill everything but itself, release the research animals and to isolate itself from the rest of the station. The sole survivor, your friend Aaron Avery, telecoms a message to you as to what happened and how they can begin to defeat the alien... and prevent the second egg from hatching.

Alien Mind has plays as a top down arcade shooter, akin to Gauntlet, which could tell if you're balding. You'll need to pick up ammo (once it runs out, you're dogmeat - so conserve it!) medical packs, energy conductors (slowing down your foes) and shields to help you pass every level. But to Alien Mind, there was more than that. You have to access terminals to activate different facets of Zekford that allows you to continue to traverse the station. Puzzles have to be solved, in the form of riddles found on specific computer terminals you will access so that the Alien could never decipher such questions and intercept the messages sent by you and Aaron.

If you didn't buy the game, which you should of if you were a IIGS gamer back in '88, you couldn't possibly solve all of the riddles given in the game because some of the answers were to be found in the background information of the accompanying manual. So, for your convenience, I have included answers to all the riddles throughout the game (spoilers follow!):

Telegram
aqua
hammock
radiation
elevator
judy
siren
Biologist Ho!
CDEFGAB
light
biolab
sombrero
glass
MCLXXIV
ear
telescope
Atlantis
transit
oasis
hieroglyphics
easel
ark
anthill
igloo
black hole

With that in mind, do not just use all these codes as soon as you come across them - it will detract from the fun of the game. If the riddle doesn't involve information on any of the characters within the game, sit down and think about an answer...look it up in a encyclopedia if you have to! It won't be that easy anyway, to just have the codes, because the trick is find the terminals as well. It's important you move onto the next terminal as quickly as possible as you will need at least 3500 hit points to survive the showdown with the alien.

Additional - Trying to access the IIGS control panel (open apple, control, escape) is where games can be saved and resumed. A save game disk is included in the archive for your convenience.

'Ballmerpeak' has hacked the FUCK crack to make it work on the ROM03. And then went one giant, massively convenient step further - hacking together ALL four disks into a single volume that will boot and play from the CFFA3000 or emulators. You don't need to swap disks, even for saving and resuming games now. Heaven. He's written a write up for the hack in one and two parts. This new version can be downloaded above from the disk image archive link or from Ballmerpeak's own site.

In 2020, qkumba has taken a stab at converting Alien Mind to a file based version that works from any ProDOS volume. Currently it works fine if you boot with ProDOS 8 and run Alien Mind's Loader.system, but your mileage may vary when booting from System 6.0.x and launching it from GS/OS. It's possible a slot configuration or issues with the CFFA3000 may be the cause of failure to launch from GS/OS. Qkumba will continue to see if it can be improved. It's quite an amazing first step – I never thought we'd ever see Alien Mind running from GS/OS. Qkumba has done the impossible again! The current version is included in Alien Mind's 2image .zip archive.