"Pretty solid Atari game, but not as spectacularly awesome as when it was new"

I never really got into the Space Invaders arcade game. Maybe that's because I had my own version at home, which I could play for free, and which quite frankly had better aliens and cooler colors. Of the alleged 112 different variations I must have ignored 100 or so and of course the main game(#1) was the one I played the most. But as this came free with the Atari it was certainly impressive for folks to know that there were 112 different game variations, even if many were ludicrous(moving barriers, moving missiles, okay, but INVISIBLE aliens?!) I remember, being seven, that I momentarily had trouble coming to grips with how setting the difficulty switch to make your base bigger would make the game harder--wasn't bigger better, even if the thing DID look like it'd eaten too many burgers? The game itself was pretty simple; you had a range you could go in, six aliens wide, and the aliens themselves moved zigzag downward in a grid eight units wide, pausing a bit before each move. If they got to the bottom or shot you three times, you lost. You could stall them by shooting the whole bottom row or more indirectly by shooting an end column, which would mean they'd have to go further horizontally before dropping down. To complicate matters, the more you shot, the faster the monsters went--I've gotten stung by the final monster a lot, as you only have a few chances to shoot him. In the first few levels bunkers would protect you from the monsters(until they descended/shot through them) but at later levels the monsters are just one level below ground. There's only one good strategy to kill them, except maybe in two-player mode(where you can even co-operate, a nice touch.)

This is one of the few home system games that was better than the arcade. It's mostly down to color, but I in fact liked the critters who wanted to take over the earth, too. Looking at the dramatis personae, there was some jellyfish-looking guy at the bottom, and eyeball on legs second, a two-legged mushroom with eyes, an X that seemed to be doing the jumping jacks, an undefinable blob(the least of the invaders in terms of artistry) and an alarm clock with eyes and horns that twitched. They in fact inspired nicknames, and NOTHING will coax them out of me--I've even forgotten a few of them, no, really. Each bad-guy had two animation states which switched when they moved--the first, second and sixth had one that was a mirror image of the other, and the other half had two symmetrical ones. There was also a purple UFO going across the top of the screen, which provided a lot of the challenge, as it was the toughest to judge when to hit. There are cool explosions when you shoot something--or are shot. And after the game is over you have a ''ghost base'' which can try to wander around and avoid getting hit until the aliens land. One thing I always liked about the game was how the aliens would pump bullets into the ground even after they landed. Looks like the troops were allowed to turn the screws! The marching noises when enemies moved and the blips when they were shot(as well as the pass-the-gas noise when you got hit) still make sense.

The one most obvious problem with the game is that you don't get any extra men. As this only leads to repeating the same level(the fifth) over and over, the desirability of this can be debated. But it's just not fair.

I was glad to see my old friends that I had named when I was seven or so and had gotten my Atari. However once the reunion was over I blasted them, and once I'd cleared the lowest level I'd had enough of Space Invaders and left them without calling 911 for their injuries(couldn't find how to do that in my Atari system manual.) And no, I didn't hang around to play one of each of the other 111 games. But the aliens are neat pixelations, some of the best for the Atari, and it's fun to blast them a little while. Although it was hyped more, the game doesn't have the variety of the other that came free with an Atari(Combat) although both are substantially better than some alleged efforts in future years. True, I loved Space Invaders and played it entirely too much at the time it came out. The aliens are still likable. But there's nothing particularly clever about it beyond that.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/00, Updated 12/21/00