Trivia
In the first level, an original Area 51 arcade cabinet can be seen.
Contributed by
M4R14N0 (136) on Feb 23, 2009.
In October 2008 the Windows version of the game was made available free of charge. The download link can be found in the related links section.
Contributed by
Sciere 
(118923) on Oct 10, 2008.
Originally slated for a Fall 2004 release, Area-51 was criticized in previews for not doing anything new to the genre. Destined to do the best they can, Midway paid attention to these previews, and delayed the game to a Spring 2005 release.
Over that period of time, Midway made lots of changes to the game. (I took note of such changes by comparing a demo of Area-51 on Official Xbox Magazine's November 2004 demo disc to the full retail version of the game.) Most importantly, they added an innovative "scanner" that scans secret documents for information that can later be read when you quit your game session. If the scanner is not pointed at a document, it will display the statistics of an air sample. The other tweaks to the game include:
- The HUD, title screens, and menus look more polished.
- When you die, your death will be seen from a first-person view.
- Health packs now increase your health more.
- Cutscenes have now been added to give the game a more cinematic feel.
- Following the footsteps of Halo 2, there is now dual-wield for the machinegun and shotgun. (Yes, you heard right...dual-wielding a shotgun!)
- Information at the top of the screen tells you what type of item you picked up.
- The pistol now has a sight feature.
- The shotgun is no longer pumped after two individual shotgun shots, but will still pump after doing the "2 shells at once" alt-fire.
- You now load 2 shells into the shotgun at once when reloading it.
- The sniper rifle's zoom is now tinted green, to bear resemblance to an actual sniper rifle.
- The gamepad vibration effects have been improved. You can now feel vibrations when you're reloading a weapon, so that you actually get the sensation that you're reloading a gun. The "heaviness" of the reload vibrations also depend on how heavy the gun you're carrying is, further adding to the immersion.
- Voice acting has been improved. The characters sound less like Texans than they do in the demo I played (I know that the developers of Area-51 are based in Austin, Texas, but...)
- Controls have been improved to bear more resemblance to Halo's control scheme.
- The level design is less linear. Levels in the retail version now include keycards in addition to usable objects, both of which the demo I played lacked.
In response to this, Official Xbox Magazine included an updated demo of Area-51 with their April 2005 demo disc, which is a much more accurate representation of the full retail version of the game. They apparently didn't want their consumers to be misled that the full retail version of Area-51 was the same as the demo on their November 2004 disc, which, as stated above, it is not.
