Space Invaders

"Classic"

When the Atari 2600 was made, a lot of the games were remakes of arcade games. For example, Missile Command and Frogger were two of the most popular. Space Invaders was probably my favorite Atari 2600 games and took hours of my game playing time as a kid.

In Space Invaders, you take the role of a tank on ground level, and you have to kill a certain number of aliens on the screen to continue on to the next level. Changing the difficulty level of the game will change the size of your tank. The aliens are in rows and they scroll back and forth, and to make it hard, once one reaches as far as it can go, the whole line falls down farther. At the beginning they will move slow, but as you kill more you will encounter amazing speeds seeming unbeatable to kill. Luckily there are three temporary shields to help you. These shields will protect you from fire from the aliens, but will slowly be destroyed by alien fire and your own.

All of the aliens have the ability to shoot at you but most of them don't, and when they do, their projectiles don't move too fast. Also every once in a while there will be a space ship floating above worth big bonus points.

Space Invaders was a fun and addicting game when it came out in the 80's. To me it is still very fun today, and it paved the way for many famous shooters coming after it.

Graphics: 8/10
Considering this is an Atari game, the graphics were pretty good. But this also means that the highlights were different colors, and shapes that you can actually make out.

Sound: 7/10
There really wasn't that much. There were a few sound effects, but no background music. The sound effects were pretty good standards for a 2600 game. I liked how the sound effects were well synced with the movement of the aliens. As they moved faster, so did the sound effects, which added a sense of excitement and anticipation.

Game Play: 9/10
If you have a good working controller, the controls are flawless. Your tank moves very swiftly and at a good pace, as does the shots you fire.

Fun Factor/Replay Value: 10/10
This game is still a very fun game to play on my list. My cousin and I used to play it all of the time when we were younger, and now we still play it from time to time just for old times sake. Once you pop this into your 2600 you will fall in love with it, even if you aren't a fan of shooter games. Replay value is high, much with any good two-player game though, there isn't a two-player mode where you compete. I would have liked to see something like that.

Final Score: 8/10
Though it has some graphics and sound flaws, this is an awesome game with great fun loaded into it and it should keep you occupied for quite some time.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/06