Early game still draws in fans

Video game review: Space Invaders

February 15, 2022

Players for generations have enjoyed the simple graphics.

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“With groundbreaking sound effects, graphics and still great gameplay, Space Invaders truly is an impressive, revolutionary shooter that still remains playable and fun to this day.”

Three years ago, a reviewer who goes by the name of simbasible took a look at a video game that was outstanding over 40 years ago. That game, Space Invaders, created a foundation for several of the games that are popular today. This is what he had to say:

Space Invaders is a 1978 arcade fixed shooter video game by Taito. It’s considered to be one of the most important titles in video game history and I entirely agree with that thought.

In this fixed shooter you control a canon laser and you have to shoot and defeat five rows of eleven aliens. Whenever you finish off the entire screen, a new level begins with faster moving, more difficult to conquer aliens. When they reach the bottom of the screen or kill you, the game is over. And it’s endless as the number of levels isn’t fixed.

Yes, this is a very simple game, but for its time it was groundbreaking and I personally still find it very playable and entertaining to this day and age. It aged so remarkably well for a 70s game that I admire its makers a lot for making such a timeless, highly influential game not only in the shooter genre, but for all the other games to follow as it truly was one of the first great and successful instances of a video game.

Now let’s talk about the gameplay in more detail. I loved that red ship that comes from time to time and if you shoot it successfully, you get more points. That was demanding enough to be quite interesting. And I honestly found the entire game rather demanding, especially for its time, and I don’t think I have reached the level greater than the sixth or seventh one as it becomes exceedingly difficult around the fifth level to the point of their movements being extremely frenetic and infuriatingly hard to shoot.

That high difficulty level is one of the biggest reasons why Space Invaders can be enjoyed to this day quite a bit, at least I personally enjoyed playing it for days. It’s a highly memorable game too in its looks alone and obviously every other shooter in its wake owes it quite a lot.

The game looks absolutely awesome for 1978. Yes, the colors are only green, white and black for the most part, but all the other games looked like that in that time. I am talking about the ships’ designs which are quite solid and the aliens even look okay. Their movements are polished and the game is very well imagined in both difficulty and level design. I loved having those colons defend me from their attacks and that made the game more strategic and interesting to play.

The score in Space Invaders is also particularly good and the sound effects are excellent and groundbreaking. The plot is unfortunately entirely non-existent, but not really needed for this type of genre. But in the technical aspects, all of them really, the game excelled and it truly was revolutionary in every single aspect.

Now, the game isn’t particularly entertaining to play for more than a couple of weeks or even days. I played it a bit each day so it held my interest, but otherwise it doesn’t have all that big of a replay value and it’s only worth playing for longer periods of time if you intend to break your own record just like I did. But I am glad that I could check it out through an online emulator and playing a game this old and genuinely enjoying it was a revelatory experience.

With groundbreaking sound effects, graphics and still great gameplay, Space Invaders truly is an impressive, revolutionary shooter that still remains playable and fun to this day. It’s not entertaining for a longer play, but otherwise it’s admirable in its well imagined gameplay mechanics and a particularly high difficulty level. It’s a classic video game without a doubt.