Developed by Mesa Logic and distributed into arcades by Atari Games in 1995, Area 51 is a lightgun shooter for one or two players where you play as a member of a military incursion team, called the Strategic Tactical Advanced Alien Response (STAAR), which has been sent in to prevent aliens – known as The Kronn – and alien-created zombies, from taking over the infamous Area 51 military facility.

The aim is to make your way through various parts of the facility, shooting as many aliens and zombies as possible, and without harming any STAAR team members, and to activate the nuclear self-destruct sequence, before making your escape.

You begin the game with an automatic pistol that can hold eight bullets, but can shoot ammo crates to acquire upgraded weapons, including an automatic machine gun, a pump-action shotgun, and an automatic shotgun. After gaining an upgrade, if the player is shot by an enemy at any time, the weapon is instantly downgraded back to the pistol (which is a bummer). To reload you must shoot off-screen.

Grenades can also be collected and thrown to destroy all enemies on-screen, and yellow explosive barrels can be shot to cause explosions that will take out any enemies near them.

The graphics in Area 51 are a mixture of pre-rendered backgrounds, with 2D, shot-on-video characters animated over the top. Enemies are stop motion-animated, filmed on video, then cut-out and added to the backgrounds. All the STAAR characters are played by actors.

Although Area 51 wasn’t well-received critically, and doesn’t look very good by today’s standards, the game was a major (and much-needed) hit for Atari Games, selling over 20,000 cabinets. The game has been cited as “the first step” in a comeback, which brought the company back from the brink of financial collapse to being a major force in the arcade industry again.

Playing Area 51 now, it’s still fun to a certain degree, but visually it looks very dated and the gameplay is somewhat frustrating – mostly because some on-screen targets appear only fleetingly and are extremely difficult to shoot, and also because it’s not easy getting the game to run smoothly enough so that weapon responsiveness is as it should be.

Mesa Logic and Atari Games followed-up with a spiritual successor in 1997, called Maximum Force, and a direct sequel – called Area 51: Site 4 – in 1998. Ports of Area 51 were released for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and for Windows PCs, in 1996.

More: Area 51 on Wikipedia