Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks terrified me as a child. Decades later, I understand that it’s a love letter to classic sci-fi and an adaptation of a controversial ‘60s trading card game, but back then, its big-brained aliens were the stuff of nightmares. Their gibberish language, penchant for death and destruction, and unsettlingly uncanny design had me hiding behind the sofa fearing they’d descend from the skies and destroy everything I’d ever loved.

You’ll be surprised to hear that this never happened, but it didn’t stop my parents from hiding the VHS tape on top of their bedroom wardrobe so my siblings and I couldn’t reach it. Now, a video game has been announced to take me back down memory lane. A theme park sim set on the surface of Mars where the little green men put enslaved humans to work for their own twisted amusement. While clearly early in development, it already looks like a ton of fun.

Don’t Run, We Are Your Friends

If you’ve only ever seen the 1996 film, you’ll be surprised to learn that the Topps collection of trading cards from several decades earlier was incredibly controversial for its graphic scenes of bloody violence and nudity, despite the fact it was marketed towards children. They told a story of a Martian invasion as the alien interlopers descended on Earth and began murdering billions. It saw them setting golden retrievers alight with flamethrowers, assaulting women in the middle of the night, and mutating insects to slowly but surely take over the world.

Just a few weeks ago I saw Mars Attacks at the local cinema for a one-off screening, so the timing of this game announcement feels all the more coincidental.

But humanity fought back, and as the narrative progressed we embraced space travel as we took the fight back to the red planet, doing everything we could to stop the alien menace. It’s a happy ending, all things considered, but Mars Attacks was memorable because it was grim, gruesome, and fed into societal fears of the time. I would be losing my mind as a kid getting one of these cards with a stick of bubble gum, begging my parents to pick up another, as my friends and I tried in vain to piece the story together. It’s not like you had anything else that would keep you entertained back then. What was I going to do, go outside?! Not a chance...

Ack! Ack! Ack!

Mars Attracts, as the upcoming video game is known, was revealed at Gamescom with a CG trailer that features a lone cowboy waking up on the surface of the lonely red planet to notice he is trapped within a disgusting extraterrestrial theme park. A glorified zoo where individuals from across human history have been plucked from Earth and placed here as attractions. It’s a place the Martians venture to in order to let off some steam between invasions, I suppose.

The trading card game proved so controversial that Topps was eventually forced to halt production, leading original versions of the cards to now be incredibly rare.

We glimpse rollercoasters, confectionery stands, and even a spin on Mount Rushmore from the film where the famous presidents are replaced by veiny pompous creatures. You’ll take on the role of Martian CEO as you build myriad attractions from across human history with specific focus on making humans miserable and your fellow martians delighted. Gameplay on the Steam page looks somewhat unpolished right now but, considering its early access build isn’t due until 2025, there is a lot of potential here to create a park sim with a fun twist.

You will be encouraged to create realistic dioramas, so the captured humans feel like they never left home to begin with, or you can pick a certain group or culture to experiment on and react spontaneously to the results. Many of the attractions are made up of body parts extracted from unwilling test subjects, which is perfectly befitting of the Mars Attacks vibe. Personally I love seeing the Martians walking around without helmets as they take pictures with each other like it’s a cutesy family vacation, all while holding balloons made of brains and waiting in line to witness a capitalist genocide of their own making.

Mars Attacks used to be the stuff of my deepest, darkest nightmares, but now I can finally appreciate its tongue-in-cheek brilliance in the best way possible - by building a theme park.

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