Based on a slightly underwhelming, yet unique, splitscreen multiplayer arcade game from 1987, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what film series Xenophobe very closely ‘homages’.

Yep, it takes plenty of cues from the Alien series, with Giger-esque aliens infesting spaceships that you need to try and clear before time runs out.

The Atari 2600, by 1990, was (incredibly) already 13 years old, and even in its day it struggled to adapt fairly simple arcade titles.

So of course, it’s in no shape to do Xenophobe justice, and it really does struggle; even the two player mode, which it’s claimed players  can work together on, doesn’t take place simultaneously, yet the play area is always a thin strip of the screen, even in single player mode.

It’s an admirable, if obviously doomed, attempt, with irritatingly designed enemies and objects, lots of flicker and a very slow moving, frustratingly incapable player character.

Though I have had a bit of enjoyment from Xenophobe (you have to admire that this was even attempted, so late in the 2600’s lifespan), it’s ultimately not all that fun to wrestle with the controls and struggle through its somewhat repetitive and harshly designed stages.