Let’s get back this site’s favorite topic—original Game Boy games!—with an obscure gem: 1990’s Heiankyo Alien (平安京エイリアン). Despite being a very successful and historically significant arcade title in Japan, the game is mostly unknown in the west. People interested in video game history may have some knowledge of Heiankyo Alien, but if you don’t, say, watch Jeremy Parish videos or listen to the podcast They Create Worlds then you’ve likely never heard of it.

Perhaps part of the reason for Heiankyo Alien’s obscurity is that when the game first came over to North America, it was localized/rebranded under the title “Digger”. While that surely didn’t help, I think the more likely reason is that the games influenced by Heiankyo Alien went on to become much bigger hits. This was obviously the case with Pac-Man, but I’d say Lode Runner also became extremely well-known, while its maze-digging forerunner was forgotten.

Heiankyo Alien pioneered the maze chase genre in video games, a premise that Pac-Man would make insanely popular when it was released just a year later. It’s also an early example of digging holes to trap enemies, something that became surprisingly common in games at the time, notably Space Panic and Lode Runner. Interestingly, this game was originally developed by a computer club at Tōdai (the University of Tokyo), a small group of students going by the name “Theoretical Science Group”, or TSG for short.

Arriving just after the Space Invaders boom had swept Japan, it was always fairly likely Heiankyo Alien would use an “alien invaders” theme. However, according to a developer interview from 2002 (translated by shmuplations), when the game was first being developed, the initial concept was actually for catching cockroaches in a house. It wasn’t until the movie Alien came out that they decided to turn their roaches into aliens, and the house into a city. Wow, so much of pop culture seems to call back to that movie and its sequel, it’s honestly kind of mind-boggling.

Typically works depicting an alien invasion are set in the present day, or perhaps in a near future. This is one area where TSG took a novel swerve, setting their game around 1000 years in the past. The first part of the game’s title, Heian-kyō (平安京), is an old name for the city of Kyoto, which was Japan’s capital city for over a millennium (from 794 to 1185). Instead of a spaceship or missile battery, the player controls a more historically accurate kebiishi (検非違使): a Heian era police officer who one could more-or-less describe as a Samurai Cop.

Yet instead of a sword or spear or bow, your badass kebiishi is armed only with a shovel. And that’s because the gameplay of Heiankyo Alien revolves around digging holes in the ground for aliens to fall into, and then quickly filling those holes back up to bury and eliminate the sunken enemy. Your hero has to avoid the aliens roaming the streets of course, as any contact results in being immediately eaten, so getting the drop on these extraterrestrial predators is key to hole sale victory. And sure, in its original incarnation your hero is merely a stick figure and the city’s building are just solid blocks, but that was about as good as visuals got in those days.

Make it far enough and you’ll be presented with an interstitial cutscene, much like Pac-Man used to do.

The original version of this game debuted in Japanese arcades in 1979, but the Heiankyo Alien we are discussing here is the Game Boy version from 1990. The Game Boy title was published by Meldac, a music company who only published a handful of video games in the early 90’s, with the port developed by a team called “Live Planning”. Fun Fact about Meldac: They produced actress Jennifer Love Hewitt’s first studio album (called “Love Songs”) which was released exclusively in Japan. That happened in 1992, when Hewitt was 12 years old, and apparently made her something of a popstar in Japan. Random….

The Game Boy release of Heiankyo Alien includes two game modes, both of which portray the same topdown viewpoint for hole-digging action. The Old Version, emulating the 1979 arcade game with its basic ‘stick figure’ graphics and primitive sound effects, and a New Version, featuring updated—and far more expressive—pixel art visuals and multiple background music tracks. While it's always cool to see developers honoring a game’s past, I really doubt the Old Version has ever received much playtime past a quick look. The New Version is so vastly superior in every way, it’s clearly the game you’re expected to play.

The Old Version is playable, but much less charming.

For one thing, the new pixel art is excellent. The sprite work here is super impressive, especially considering how clearly game elements are rendered using very little screen real estate. The player sprite is expressively animated, frantically running around in his kebiishi armor, and looks great despite the tricky topdown perspective. The aliens similarly look quite good in this art style. Their designs are legitimately otherworldly, and while they manage to look pretty cool, they also feel quite original as far as these things go. And since the alien designs mainly boil down to one huge head with a terrifying maw of sharp teeth, these creatures exude a shark-like threatening vibe.

But if the charming pixel art doesn’t win you over, the insanely catchy music will. Right from the jump, the main menu hits you with a percussive melody inspired by classical Japanese music. This music would be right at home in a Samurai Shodown game and perfectly sets the mood for the Heian era Japan setting.

Even the sprite of the alien chomping down on your kebiishi hero when you die is pretty cute.

When the game actually gets going, the stage music really gets cooking with some virtuosic 8-bit tunes. There are three different tracks that cycle through as level background music and each one is a certified banger. After playing a few rounds and walking away from the game, I would find myself humming one of these tunes over and over. The Game Boy’s sound chip is legendary for a reason and here it is put to excellent use. According to MobyGames, two people were responsible for Heiankyo Alien’s awesome music, Norio Nakagata and Takane Ohkubo, although neither received credit for their work.

In terms of gameplay, Heiankyo Alien offers an arcadey, puzzle game experience. Eliminate all aliens without getting eaten to clear the stage. The maze chase aspect of avoiding aliens is intuitive and incredibly straightforward; something that any player will immediately recognize and understand. The primary mechanic of digging holes is easy to grasp, though the controls might take a second to make sense of.

The A Button digs a hole in the tile your hero is directly facing, but the process takes a bit of time. You have to hold down the A Button for three swings of the shovel in order to open a full-sized pitfall trap—a hole big enough for an alien to fall into. The B Button fills in holes you’ve already made, and this also involves holding the button for three cycles in order to complete the action.

If an alien collides with a hole that hasn’t reached full pitfall diameter yet, it will merely slow down the creature for a second before it continues onward. (That partial hole will also get filled in as the alien passes over it.) This means that if an alien is coming right at the player, stopping to dig a hole between it and you might not be a good idea; the player always needs enough time to finish digging.

When an alien falls into a pitfall, the player needs to fill it back in quickly to successfully dispatch the foe. After a few seconds the alien will work his way out, so the clock is ticking. Should the player be in the process of filling in a hole when the sunken alien gets loose, he is very likely to be eaten. Also if a roaming alien runs into an alien who’s currently stuck in a hole, the trapped alien will be immediately freed (and the hole immediately filled in, of course).

The arcade action of Heiankyo Alien makes it pretty ideal for a handheld game. It’s easy to pick up, play for short bursts, and put down just as quickly. There’s no need for any guidance or tutorializing; the player can learn everything through normal trial and error. And it’s fun to discover how exactly everything works. Overall it’s a simple game, as one would expect a 70’s arcade game to be.

One aspect I found intriguingly old fashioned: whenever the player dies, all enemies on the stage are reset. Even if you had captured all aliens except one—and that alien eats you—your progress for that stage is undone and you start the level over.

They could have let you maintain your progress in a stage when losing a life (the number of lives you have is limited after all), but they didn’t; and I think the game is probably stronger for it. The sense of tension when only one enemy remains on screen is heightened, especially on later stages which have more aliens to contend with. This is particularly true because that final alien starts moving much faster when it’s the last one left. If the penalty for failure at that point was simply to lose a life, the completion of each stage would not feel nearly as satisfying.

Was the **pitfall** item in **Animal Crossing** actually a reference to Heiankyo Alien? One has to wonder.

When I first picked up a copy of this game, I really wasn’t expecting to have that much fun with it. Mostly I just wanted to experience some version of Heiankyo Alien for its historical significance, and of course the Game Boy is one of my favorite consoles ever. To my surprise however, I found myself genuinely enjoying the game. In fact, I kind of love it! This one has quickly become a new favorite Game Boy game.

Charming visuals, incredible music, easy to pick up/put down at a moment’s notice, plus extraterrestrial intrigue set in ancient Japan…What’s not to love?