Review of Space Invaders Extreme

To understand how brilliant this game is, one should look back a the original phenom and other, less successful attempts to revive it.

The old: 1978's Space Invaders took the world by storm. In Japan, this popular game caused a shortage of the 100yen coins needed to play a game. In the USA, it munched similar amounts of quarters. The simple gameplay appealed to all types of people in the then-new arena of video games. Two years later, Atari licensed the arcade game for release at home, and the box proudly trumpeted "112 VIDEO GAMES"! These were all slight variations on the theme, with moving bases, invisible invaders, co-op play, fat players, and other small tweaks. Neat!

The others: Space Invaders was brilliant thirty years ago. The "thump thump thump" sounds of the invaders, and their iconic look are known by almost everyone, but the old game is slow and tedious. As much as I want to love it now, it's just too crusty and dusty -- and younger people will certainly turn up their nose at the limited options for fun. I feel that I could get a high score on the old game but I usually quit before losing, as it's a chore to play. The game has been trotted out in "old faithful" and "reimagined" formats for just about every system available, but they all have suffered the same problems as the original: the turgid, formal, repetitive gameplay just didn't age well, and most designers felt that giving the game more flair would dilute the original feel, making it more like Galaga than Space Invaders.

The now: SPACE INVADERS EXTREME reboots the whole concept. If you look at the screenshots, it looks like more of the same: You're still a little shooter at the bottom of the screen, and the invaders are still coming down at you, firing missiles at you and your protective bunkers.

thump
thump
thump
Yawn.

But wait! There's also an "interactive" synth soundtrack that moves everything along like a dance club. The invaders aren't shambling zombies anymore, they're FAST, and so are you. You can grab powerups like lasers that can clear out a whole column (or more!) of baddies with one shot. There are spread shots that can nuke entire rows. The enemy's formations change, sometimes you get big invaders, sometimes they have shields, sometimes they blow up all their neighbors when hit. The once-rare UFOs are now plentiful. The old vanilla 4-digit scoring has been replaced by a dynamic, pinball-style multiplier system with lots of pyrotechnics to match. Every 30 seconds or so, the game changes everything up so you aren't looking at the same phosphor-burn grid for minutes at a time.

Regular, bonus, and "boss" levels cleverly steal from other shooter games like Galaga, Attack of the Timelord (leave a comment for me if you know this cool game!), Gyruss Centipede, Gorf, Megamania, Phoenix, and others. Yes, "boss" levels are in here, where you have some biggies that take multiple shots to destroy. With the lights and music blaring away, these battles are not the tedious grind of old. The game remembers your last completed level, so you can always feel like you're making "progress," not just chasing the pure abstraction of a high score. There are worldwide online leaderboards for comparing your skills with others, too.

The game is also dead-easy to get into, just like the original. Just point and shoot. If you're really hardcore, you can import the Taito Arkanoid spinner to control this game, but left-right-shoot buttons are really more "pure."

To sum up:
Space Invaders classic concept;
Dazzling psychedelic special effects;
Dynamic, "always-on" gameplay that challenges without frustration;
High-score arcade purity with enough progression to make the game feel purposeful;
All for a bargain price.

If you have EVER liked Space Invaders (even if, like me, the thrill is gone), and you have a Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable, you will get many kicks from Space Invaders Extreme.

Import note: the Japanese version of this game is almost identical to the USA release except for a few lines of self-evident explanatory text, but the USA version is cheaper.



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