Independence Day–aka ID4–is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week. As far as I’m concerned, it can be considered the quintessential summer blockbuster, and it’s one of those flicks I wish I had gone to in theaters as a kid (my mom even liked it, so who knows, she might’ve taken 8-year-old Scrat if they had asked). Its production history is filled with very amusing and bizarre stories, including that Fox rushed the movie along because they wanted to beat “Tim Burton’s secret alien invasion film” Mars Attacks! to the box office punch…apparently completely unaware it was going to be a parody. In any case, it paid off in a huge way, as ID4 would go on to become one of the biggest movies of all time (Mars Attacks!, ironically, would be a rare flop for Burton when it opened the following Christmas).

Independence Day had an absolutely deafening amount of hype surrounding its release, and since it was the 90s, it should surprise no one this included a line of action figures. And by “action figures” I mean they turned Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman into G.I. Joe toys. Remember how they lugged around missile launchers and grappling hooks in the movie? Classic stuff. But what really made this promotion unique was that every figure or vehicle or playset or alien or sex toy came with a computer game. On a disk! Doesn’t get much more 90s than that!

Now, these were very basic–they were freebies, after all–but I do kind of love the novelty factor. Like I’m sure I would’ve dug these as a boy if I had been able to figure out how to get them to work (then again, I could install CD-ROM titles on my PC all by myself, so maybe a floppy disk wouldn’t have been too tricky for me). Each “mission” consisted of a simple mini-game, and many of them had you playing as…well, the aliens. You could hack earth’s satellites! You could experiment on earth’s animals! You could run flight simulations to practice wiping those filthy humans off the face of the motherfucking planet you were about to conquer! You could…wait, I don’t think my mom would’ve wanted me playing these.

Something more up my childhood alley was a Tiger Electronics LCD game, although this came from the period where the company was trying to spice things up to make them seem more advanced than they actually were. In this case, it was a…light gun game? How the fuck did that work with a tiny LCD screen? This commercial shows the dude playing hard in a darkened room, but you really couldn’t use these Tiger gizmos if you didn’t have a lamp or other source of light nearby. I do wonder if this even functioned as intended–it certainly wouldn’t be any good for long car rides–but then again, it had a gun, so my mom never would’ve let me anywhere near it anyway.

Welcome to earth, y’all!