I think im one of older fans over here reading the responses. Anyway, to correct myself from my previous post, i didnt see A3 in theaters, i got to know it when it was all around the media while it was in theaters
My very first encounter with the alien franchise was the teaser trailer for "Aliens" way back, even before A3 came out. It seemed the scariest thing ever, and being very young I didn;t even wanna see it cause thought its way too scary
Aliens was such a big hit that the franchise became an icon, everyone knew what alien is wheter he'd seen the movie or not. Kind of like with Batman or Superman.
Then the first, legendary AVP comic book came out and it was just mind blowing. I must've read it a hundred times and joined the AVP fanclub
I was born and raised in Europe, and as some of you may know, Alien 3 was a big hit there. So when it was in theaters it was all over the place, in every magazine, movie show etc. It seemed really big and scary as hell.
Immediately after it was released on VHS I rented it and saw it, and I think for me that was THE scariest movie ive ever seen by that point. Also, its prequel became something of a legend - ive only seen the teaser and after seeing A3 I was thinking "damn, who were those people in EEV and what they are survivors of? what kind of nightmare did they go through?"
I saw Aliens some time later and Alien I saw much, much later in 1997 which is good because I was old enough to "get" the movie