I love Space Invaders on any format. It doesn’t matter whether it is in an arcade, on an Atari 2600, in a more recent reincarnation on Xbox, or on an 80s handheld such as this.
I found out recently after reading the Taito twitter feed, Taito being the creators and distributors of Space Invaders, the invaders themselves were based on sea life – a squid, an octopus, a jellyfish… That really hadn’t occured to me until that moment, despite me wasting countless 20p coins in arcade machines over a good 20 year duration.
On this incarnation of Space Invaders, the invaders descend from above, firing bullets at you while you attempt to fire bullets back at them while taking cover behind shields.
The console itself requires a light source, in the same way that the Tomytronic games did. Without playing this near a window you had no idea who was firing and how far you were from death.
Also, as it is an LCD game, the invaders are quite limited in where they appear. And there aren’t enough of them for my liking.
Brilliant concept for a game, but this handheld isn’t the best one to play on.
