Alien Legacy
DOS - 1994
Description of Alien Legacy
Designed by Joe Ybarra, designer of the classic Starflight games, Alien Legacy is an excellent space strategy game with a good dose of adventure and action elements thrown in.
In the tradition of Starflight, explore and build new colonies on distant planets while researching alien technologies. The cliche plot at the start soon evolves into an interesting mix of alien espionage, mysteries, and intergalactic conflicts. A solid game (although not a classic that Starflight is) that was severely underrated and underhyped, and light-years better than the its overhyped cousin Outpost :)
Review By HOTUD
External links
How to play Alien Legacy
beenthere sent this sort of tutorial
I've played this game more times than I remember. Here is how you win :
-
Know that the game moves forward in turns at a set speed, regardless of what you are doing. You control the speed (1-10), but it keeps going, even while you are exploring, so you have to watch the turns carefully.
-
At about turn 426 or so, there will be a crisis where you will have to move everything off the Calypso to somewhere else ASAP, or you will lose whatever is still there (people, resources, robots), so you have to have a space station ready to receive them plus enough room at no more than 2 colonies on Gaia (pay attention to those numbers). More than 2 colonies on Gaia before the next crisis strikes (plant life starts attacking the colonies on Gaia) will start that crisis prematurely, and make it that much more difficult to gather the technology and resources you need to defeat the NEXT big crisis (aliens hiding out on the gas planet next to Zeus).
-
The key is to delay the onset of these crisis as long as possible to give you time to gather resources and technology (the most time-consuming part of this game) to prevail over them as handily as possible. Experience playing the game will give you the knowledge to do that.
-
One thing you can do that will give you a big advantage at the very start: construct 7 or more factories on Calypso and let them all produce at least one ship, then make them inactive while you focus on sending exploration ships to the inner planets to do some initial exploration (you have to do that early in order to allow technology discoveries to occur). At the same time, immediately build up two colonies on Gaia, but not more, with a minimum of 2 factories and 2 power plants, and 1 science lab as soon as you can, using the personal freed up from pausing the factories on Calypso. Then, as additional personnel are revived on Calypso, allow the shipboard factories to build one additional ship each (you will have to find some more power resources on Gaia because your power plants on Calypso will be insufficient to support making all these ships); then dismantle all but 4, and focus on accomplishing everything in your "to-do" list that the program will give you to do.
This will give you up to 20 or more ships that will be badly needed later in the game, when they will take much longer to build.
Other than that, the key is patience, because this game takes a LONG time to play, up to a day or more of continuous gaming.
Captures and Snapshots
Comments and reviews
Veteran 2024-03-09 0 point
How to mount the game on a drive.
If you don't have the latest version of Dosbox, search for it on the web and get it. It's free and found in many places.
After installation, open the "options" file: "Dosbox-0.74-3.conf"
I don't change anything except this line:
cycles=40000.
40000 cycles is fast enough for good gameplay, but not so fast that working in your colonies has problems.
Close the file.
1) download the game; extract the folder with the game; move the game to the desired drive (e.g. d:\al). I changed the folder name to "al" to make it easy to type in Dosbox.
1) Open doxbox command line.
2) Type "mount d d:\al" (enter)
3) Type "d:" (enter)
4) Type "al" (enter)
game begins to run in dosbox.
vmxa 2023-07-17 1 point
I downloaded the iso for Alien Legacy. I own the original cd, but my PC does not have a drive for cd or dvd. I tried to mount the iso file to run the install.bat, but dosbox
did not like pointing to my f drive.
Cannot run the bat as the installer is 16 bit. Thanks for any
brigade leader 2020-09-13 0 point
This is a classic game that should NEVER be remade, maybe a facelift but only if it is in the same atmosphere and spirit as the old game! leave EVERYTHING else including voice acting and music in tact! I hope Gog doesn't get it and try and "censor" out all the good parts. PC crowd stinks!
NipNongDingDong 2019-01-20 3 points
You can download the CD version from archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/alien-legacy
Mree 2017-04-11 0 point
Someone should make an app out this game. -any coders want to take this job on and I can finance it
Vinnie Sift 2015-09-20 1 point
Two things:
First, I fond a manual. Not dificult, just search in Google. http://www.sierragamers.com/uploads/24082/The_Games/Alien_Legacy_Disk_Manual.pdf
Second: If someone is interested, theres a page in the Wishlist of GOG to make a remake or something. Vote up! http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/alien_legacy
Vinnie Sift 2015-06-12 5 points DOS version
I LOVE this game!
And YES. Need a remake. Too cool to ignore it.
8BitBURN 2015-06-09 1 point DOS version
Yes DOS box will allow you to mount a drive
actually its called a virtual drive you can have lots of drives mounted simultaneously at once even
Lord Worm 2014-11-10 0 point DOS version
Got this game among a pack of DOS games and it has literally blown me away. I just wanted to stop in and say that it is a great game and it was certainly ahead of its time.
Veteran 2014-08-02 2 points DOS version
Later in the game, when you develop the mass driver, do NOT use them to send ore to the space station around the world with aliens. This game has a bug in it that will cause the game to crash permanently if you do that.
Another bug: sometimes if you start your second colony on Gaia too early in the game, it will cause some kind of problem and the colony will mysteriously move to another location on the planet, and other problems seem to start because of it. Just wait until you discover the "colony-location detector" (can't remember the name), then there won't be a problem.
Another bug: the game seems to have a limited number of memory allocations for colonies. If you build too many of them, it will cause a permanent crash situation and it will be difficult to recover unless you have a saved game that you can go back to; but even then I've had situations when even that didn't help. Going over "the limit" probably causes some data to be overwritten. Some coder did some poor work there.
Another bug:
SWW 2014-06-14 1 point DOS version
Oh, and for reference--a cycle rate of 5000-10000 seems to work pretty well. Below 10k and planet exploration feels a little painful, but if you go too much above that, the game will advance too quickly even on speed 1.
SWW 2014-06-14 1 point DOS version
For anyone wondering--this is the disk version, not the CD version. What's the difference? Better cinematics and better music in the disk version! Hooray! Back in its day, some of this stuff (like the solar system view) seemed downright haunting.
@Deerrunner 2014-06-07 -6 points DOS version
Please no! GOG.com (even though I do support them in some ways) are destroying the abandonware scene. Let's not tempt them into just taking it upon themselves to start selling this one for $9.99, just "out of thin air", like they have with say Master of Orion 1.
Once GOG get their claws them, these all vanish from these free sites!
Best of the "A"'s 2014-06-04 1 point DOS version
Going through the games in order, this one is far the best one on this site so far. Probably will remain so even as I go much further into the alphabet!
I remember downloading this off Abandonia 3 years back and I had a permenent crash situation develop about mid-game which stopped me continuing (after a good 3-weeks play too).... hope it doesn't happen this time!
DeerRunner1 2013-12-09 1 point DOS version
I agree Soulless, let's get a remake for Windows. :-}
Soulless 2013-11-23 1 point DOS version
A legend!
3. part of outpost series i think it was
still could not end it ...
Time for a Remake too!
DeerRunner1 2013-11-16 0 point DOS version
I am always looking to find a copy of this that can be run on Windows, v-7 now, 64 bit. I got ahold of a CD, and it will not work with the new SW, OS.
I already asked at GOG.com, and they keep telling me they can not discuss the future plans.
I need Dos.Box that will also run the CD drive.
valdee_uk 2013-09-14 2 points DOS version
One of the best games ever played :)
Shame they don't make ones like this anymore ...
Re:Random Lurker 2013-07-16 -1 point DOS version
Really? So Alien Legacy has great graphics, eh? 30k cycles is too fast? I've played this game hundreds of times and know whereof I speak. Maybe you should engage your brain before opening your mouth.
Random Lurker 2013-07-06 1 point DOS version
Ignore those useless comments by the "beenthere" guy. Maybe he should playing lame current-gen games off Steam if he thinks this game has bad graphics or needs some stupid remake. Certain people don't belong on sites like this.
Also, setting your cpu cycles to 30,000 for every game in DOSBox is flat out retarded. Doing so would make a countless amount of games run too fast - in turn screwing up audio sync, animations and worse. Cycles should be either set to Auto or per-game depending on its requirements.
beenthere 2013-05-14 -2 points DOS version
This game is old, the graphics are clunky and even laughable by today's standards, but the gameplay is great. It is just begging for some game company to take the ideas of this game and update it for modern-style gaming. Who will take up this challenge?
Write a comment
Share your gamer memories, help others to run the game or comment anything you'd like. If you have trouble to run Alien Legacy, read the abandonware guide first!
Download Alien Legacy
We may have multiple downloads for few games when different versions are available. Also, we try to upload manuals and extra documentation when possible. If you have additional files to contribute or have the game in another language, please contact us!
DOS Version
10 MBSimilar games
Fellow retro gamers also downloaded these games:
