


The funny thing about the surge of AvP games in those years is that Fox’s first attempt at cracking the crossover on the big screen wouldn’t arrive until 2004, so this wasn’t some kind of huge transmedia push. Predator, a Fox-captained crossover that had already made some noise in the gaming sphere – check out Capcom’s amazing arcade brawler – and took off thanks to Dark Horse’s fantastic comic books. One sizable IP that enjoyed a big boom in the early 2000s was Aliens vs. This philosophy led to a “gold rush” of AA releases that often was more exciting and memorable than objectively better-made games. In an era of gaming that wasn’t market-researched to hell and back and during which development cycles still made sense, notable publishers such as EA took gambles with pitches that seemed exciting enough and at least guaranteed mining famous properties for quick money. I keep coming back to obscure video game releases of the 2000s because there truly was an unhinged “let’s try this and see how it goes” energy going on, especially with games based on big IPs.
