Today sees the launch of Alien Breed 35th Anniversary Collection, a six-game compendium which pays tribute to Team17's legendary xeno-busting action series.

The pack contains Alien Breed (1991), Alien Breed: Special Edition (1992), Alien Breed II: The Horror Continues (1993), Alien Breed: Tower Assault (1994), Alien Breed 3D (1995) and Alien Breed 3D II: TKG (1996), all spruced up with modern features – the most appealing of which is the introduction of twin-stick controls. Also featured is a 'Virtual Museum' packed with original media, art, music and developer interviews.

Keen to learn more about how this came to be, Steam Hype was lucky enough to speak with Jim Squires (Chief Strategy Officer, Commodore) and Mike Rouse (Studio Head / Development Director, Antstream).

Steam Hype: It's fair to say that many people were surprised to see Commodore's name attached to this - why is the company getting into game publishing, and what made Alien Breed the ideal project to kick things off with?

Jim Squires: Commodore has been no stranger to game publishing over the years, but you’re right to ask. After all, this is the first time we’ve stepped into the publishing role in the modern era.

As you’ve likely heard, Commodore today is built on the twin pillars of retro and futurism – and we take both very seriously. Retro can’t just be about nostalgia. It needs to be about preservation. With the Commodore 64 Ultimate, we demonstrated our commitment by preserving the vintage computing experience as faithfully as anyone can today. And we’re furthering our commitment to the preservation of hardware with the recently announced Commodore TAC-2. And preserving software is just as important as the hardware that runs it.

Having said that, we didn’t want to rush into things. It was just as important to have the right project to preserve as it was to understand why preservation is so valuable.

Despite being absolutely legendary for its top-down tension, the Alien Breed franchise seems to have fallen off the radar for later generations because it lacked accessible entry points. These games have never been ported to modern consoles and PCs before now. And we felt that was an absolute shame. Rectifying situations like this is what game preservation is all about.

Can you explain how the games are running under the hood? Is this pure emulation, or something else?

Mike Rouse: Emulation is where our team’s strength is at its best. Our emulation engineer has created some of the most popular emulators used by the community today.

He created a bespoke emulator for this project based on his previous work, but it was not as straightforward as expected. He used the original game source to make optimisations to the 3D games, which enabled them to run at a consistent, playable framerate which players have come to expect.

It’s these and other quality-of-life changes that were the core challenge for the team at the start of the project. How much do you change for a new generation of players with modern expectations versus what you leave for the retro-enthusiasts and Amiga system fans?

Ultimately, we opted for a less intrusive approach, preserving the more traditional gaming experience rather than a complete overhaul and modernisation. We also fixed a few original bugs that, in some cases, made progression impossible. The whole project was then wrapped in the “Archive” Space Station using Unity to create the interactive museum showcases and allow for player immersion into the first-era franchise.

How important was it to include additional material in this collection, such as the museum and developer interviews?

Mike Rouse: Team17 has been an amazing partner in this respect, with a wealth of archive material from the original games to the broader franchise, from trailers to 200-page concept documents. It was vital to the team that we add in as much additional content as we could.

We discussed as a team what we wanted to see in the games we grew up with and loved, and started building the long list. Where we could, we created mini-documentaries and timeline videos, fact-checked with Team17’s guidance and access to the original development team. Team17 also made all the introductions to the OG dev team, and we nerded out on listening to their development stories.

The whole project has been about preservation and supporting the legacy of the games. There were some Alien Breed PSP concept demos stuck on a disc that Team17 were unable to access. We organised a PSP dev kit, travelled to the Team17 offices and managed to get the games running again after nearly 2 decades. We captured the footage from the games to include in the 35th Anniversary, and for Team17’s ongoing archive efforts.

It has been a privilege and a humbling experience to revive the franchise in partnership with Team17 and Commodore. We are proud to preserve and showcase the collection alongside the original creators and platforms that defined its origins.

You've gone above and beyond with the Horde and Rush modes - how challenging was it to factor those into the existing framework of the games?

Mike Rouse: The decision was easy. The implementation was not.

For Horde mode, we were building a whole new mini-game we had not really budgeted for in the original scope. As super-fans, we ended up building most of Horde mode in our own time, over weekends and late at night to ensure we could have it in the game.

We took the Tower Assault sprite sheets for the aliens and drew over the Special Edition character sprites so that we could capture the look and feel of the classic '90s games. We played around, probably for way too long, to get the map layout correct, and then replicated the controls and enemy AI of the original game.

We then added what the classic games could not: real-time lighting effects and shadows to bring it all together. A bit of a showcase of what Alien Breed could be in the future. We also decided to make unlocking the mode a discoverable easter egg and look forward to the community figuring out how to access it and competing for high scores.

What was the biggest technical challenge with this collection?

Mike Rouse: We wanted to preserve the original games. But to preserve something that actually works on modern platforms, you have to make it relevant to new audiences. Museums do this with exhibitions or activities; for games, we can do this by adding options the modern gamers would expect to see.

For Alien Breed, we felt that adding modern control systems alongside the originals would drastically help new players experiencing the franchise for the first time. This took a lot of work, as we also wanted modern controls for the 3D games for both controller and mouse and keyboard. It was also a learning experience.

As soon as we put the demo out on Steam, people wanted to customise their keyboard controls rather than the Amiga original keymapping. We are now working on pushing a custom control system live as close to the launch as possible.

The other major technical challenge was making co-op playable online. Our Creative Director was very animated when we proposed this, questioning how it would even be possible. But after a few days of tinkering, we had a proof of concept. We then spent a few months stabilising it and adding the messaging systems required for a modern online game.

One of the more controversial decisions was making the online system peer-to-peer instead of using dedicated servers. We know P2P can have stability issues, especially over poor connections, but we wanted gamers to be able to play this collection without wondering if or when the servers would be turned off.

What aspect of the collection do you think players are going to find the most surprising?

Mike Rouse: I think players are going to be surprised by just how much passion has been put into the Alien Breed franchise over the last 35 years from talented teams of concept artists, developers, coders, illustrators, animators and storytellers.

The archives went so much deeper than we expected and uncovered some wild ideas and side projects that we think players are going to have a lot of fun uncovering for themselves.

Alien Breed 35th Anniversary Collection is out now on Steam, Epic Games, GOG, PlayStation 5 and XBOX Series X|S. The Nintendo Switch version launches later this year.