Alpha Waves

Mathias Fuchs in his book Phantasmal Spaces: Archetypical Venues in Computer Games described Alpha Waves as an early attempt bringing the traditional 2D platformer game genre into a 3D-world with interactions like moving and bouncing off platforms. He described the game as being "abstract" and "almost psychedelic presentation".

In Alpha Waves, the player controls a craft called a Mobile. The Mobile only has the ability move forward and rotate left and right. The player can control the in-game camera. The player can navigate 250 unique rooms.

Christophe de Dinechin began programming in this teens. He first began developing code for video games on his TI-99/4A in BASIC, later saying he only began coding serious video games when he got his Atari ST. In 1988, Dinechin was impressed by Starglider 2 (1988) by Argonaut Games, specifically with its shaded polygon graphics. He became determined to figure out how it was done and began working on code to create 3D graphics engine in his parents home.

Dinechin developed new code that would slowly allow the Atari ST to manipulate polygonal objects. These included not clearing an entire screen but just the part of the screen that repaint or erase parts that have changed. He recalled in an interview published in 2015 that "today, you can move billions of polygons per instruction cycle, so who cares? But at the time it was important."

Reviews from various gaming publications commented on the gameplay, visuals, and themes of the game. Reviews in ST Action, Tilt and Italy's The Games Machine magazines complimented the originality of the game, with the latter publications saying they had never seen a game like it. One review in Joystick expanded on this saying the originality came from being able to see the game world from every possible angle while summarizing that that Alpha Waves "isn't a typical game, so it won't be accessible to everyone." Reviewers in Amiga Format described the game as "truly weird", while Amiga Power found the game "bizarre" but with a "certain charm".

Other reviews in The One, Computer & Video Games, and Power Play  found the game appealing at first but found it grew either too tiring or difficult over extended play periods. A review in ACE said it "will probably only serve as a bit of light relief from "proper" games." while Computer Gaming World wrote that the end-goals in the game were too uninspiring, which led to the mazes growing duller as you explored. The publication concluded that "with a head-to-head, modern race-through-the-maze, blast-'em-if-you-see-'em upgrade, this software would have attracted a lot more attention."

Alpha Waves was the final commercial game developed by Dinechin, with the creator saying "After a while, I realized I have other ways to make a living, there is more out there than videogames, and I sort of gave up — not necessarily for the worst." At a retrospective of the game at the software engineering conference FOSDEM in 2020, Dinechin said that he thought Alpha Waves did not have the best 3D effects at the time, which he said he felt belonged to the game Falcon (1987). In their book Vintage Games (2009), authors Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton said that similar "jumping-centric" 3D platformer games be released such as Jumping Flash! (1995) and Montezuma's Return (1998).

Kyle Hilliard of Game Informer wrote that Alpha Waves was a pioneer in 3D platform games while Super Mario 64 (1996) was the innovator of the genre. This was due to the latter game setting up staples of the genre such as having power-ups, diverse goals and unique environments.