Space Invaders

This will take you back a few years. Loads of fun, Space Invaders is a game well-suited for the Game Boy. Simple, but intriguing enough to offer hours of playability. The music effect is an effective suspense-instilling instrument and the compressed-air sounds effects will bring back fond memories. Best played on the Super Game Boy, where you have an extra option called "Arcade Space Invaders"; it's actually a full-featured one-meg Super NES game that's stored on the same cartridge as the one-meg Game Boy version. Great use of the hardware and a classic game on any system.

The main problem with Space Invaders is that it had it's day in the late '70's. Back then, it was innovative. Now it's repetitive nature might turn off some gamers, though the two-player contest - the second player shoots back from the top using the UFO - is really cool. You may want to try before you buy to see if nostalgia should invade your space.

At any rate, this is one of the world's best games, plus the Super Game Boy version is the exact same version is the exact same version that sold by the truckloads when Taito released it for the Super Famicom in Japan. So show some respect, throw some 70's tunes in the CD player and relive a bygone era of video gaming.

I was expecting this cartridge to offer a brand new Space Invaders with fancy 16-bit graphics, but instead Nintendo opted to bring back the classic in its original form! That's not a bad idea considering the original Space Invaders had not been previously available for a console before. Not only do you get the classic game as it was in 1978, but also four color variations including black and white, color, color background, and cellophane (simulated color strips on screen). Its great to play Space Invaders again, but I have to admit that its not the kind of shooter you can play for hours on end. Perhaps that's why Nintendo threw in a great two-player, split screen competitive mode. A pleasant surprise, it effectively pushes this cartridge over the top.

Well, lets face it, this game is just too old to compete with the current standards. Sure, it's nostalgic, but as a game itself, it doesn't have the complexity to entertain you. The reproduction is, of course, flawless but there isn't enough to do in the game. This cart does have some value to the older players who actually got into it, but for most it will not have enough to stand up in the fast-paced video game market.

If you're a diehard Invaders addict and the prospect of having a version of the game selectable from your Wii's channel array seems terribly exciting to you, then by all means invest the Points. But everyone else, save them. Spend them on a more fully-featured 800 Point download from the SNES or Genesis libraries, or else just keep them in reserve for Taito's own Space Invaders Get Even when it finally arrives in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

So what you get in this package is by no means bad -- a solid conversion of single-player Space Invaders, multiple graphical options and an interesting added multiplayer mode. It's just that, even with the added bells and whistles, it's still too hard to justify spending a full eight dollars for Space Invaders. You might have happily dropped 32 quarters into one of the original coin-op cabinets if you were around and gaming three decades ago, but today that same amount of cash should buy a much larger amount of content in a Wii download.

Im Gegensatz zur kürzlich erschienenen PC-Engine-Version des Baller-Papis "Space Invaders" bietet die Game Boy-Umsetzung nur das Original-Spiel und kein 90er Remix. Natürlich hält das knapp neun Jahre alte Space Invaders in Sachen Grafik, Sound und Spielwitz einen Vergleich mit "Nemesis" oder "Solar Striker" nicht stand.