Alien Invaders

Description

Alien Invaders, if the name doesn't give it away, is a clone of the popular arcade game Space Invaders. It was released for the Arcadia 2001 around the system launch, most likely with the intention of giving players an alternative to the dominant Atari 2600, which coincidentally had it's own perfect(some might even say superior) port of the Space Invaders arcade game. Emerson either couldn't, or did not want to license Space Invaders itself, which lead to the creation of Alien Invaders, an unlicensed knock-off of the original. Knock-offs aren't necessarily a bad thing, and Alien Invaders, at release, had the advantage of running on a much more powerful system than the Atari.

As previously stated, Alien Invaders plays very similarly to Space Invaders. Even those without frequent video game experience have probably played either Space Invaders or some other similar game. As the title implies, aliens are invading the player's home planet. To stop them, the player takes control of a vehicle resembling a tank, which can fire shots upwards at the aliens. The aliens move back and forth, descending closer and closer to the player while firing towards the ground. To win, players must simply shoot the aliens while avoid getting shot themselves. Of course, as the aliens descend closer and closer to the ground it becomes more difficult to dodge their shots, and as more aliens are destroyed the remaining few move faster to avoid the player's shots. Eventually the player dies too many times or runs out of time and the game is over.

This is the gameplay concept that has kept Space Invaders exciting and highly enjoyable even 25 years after its release. However, Alien Invaders misses a few critical aspects of the Space Invaders gameplay formula, and in the end the execution falls short of achieving a fun game. Most importantly, the game is far too slow. While the hardware itself keeps things moving a long at a reasonable rate, the aliens appear to be much farther away from the player than in Space Invaders, and the collision detection between the player's shot and the aliens is questionable. This leads to one seeing far more missed shots than Space Invaders, and so players will often find themselves, having missed a shot, waiting for their bullet to finally travel off-screen so they can shoot another one. Furthermore, the aliens shoot infrequently, regardless of the difficulty level, and when they do shoot the bullets are generally quite easy to avoid.

The other issue lies in the customizability of the game. Where purchasers of Space Invaders on the Atari found countless gameplay variations to experiment with, Alien Invaders presents only a small selection of difficulty levels that speed up the movement of the aliens. Combined with the somewhat slow gameplay, these two faults result in a boring, and rather sterile game. On the other hand, the controls are easy to pick up and very responsive. Simply move the stick to move the player's tank left or right, and press the "2" button to fire.

One might suspect, given the faster hardware of the Arcadia 2001 over other systems at its release, the graphics would at least be better than other Space Invaders-like games. Technically, they are somewhat better, running at a higher resolution than many other games of that time, and feature a greater variety of colors. There are a few neat tricks to be seen, like the cityscape in the background that slowly gets "destroyed"(disappears, actually)as the aliens descend. And the background art features a nifty pseudo-3D appearance. There is also, for the most part, a noticeable lack of flickering.

Artistically, however, the graphics fail to draw the player into the game. Space Invaders, while limited in color variety, had a distinct science fiction theme to it, with the bright greens, oranges, and black background. Alien Invaders, on the other hand, features a mood-killing white background, and the colors of the various objects on the screen seem to have been chosen at random, ranging from magenta to yellow to blue. Also, one of the aliens looks far too much like an octopus, an octopus that flies and has a giant grin. While I also recall an alien in Space Invaders that looked sort of like a jellyfish, it didn't have a huge smile on its face, and it wasn't bright yellow. This is a serious issue, given that there are only 5 types of aliens in the game. The ridiculous octopus alien will be seen quite frequently. The font suffers the same issue as the graphics; rather than a suitably futuristic display of the current score and time, players will find a happier font that would be far more suitable in a puzzle game like Bubble Bobble.

The sound, as with most games of around the same time, is unimpressive. It consists of the usual electronic bleeps as aliens and players fire bullets and, of course, the grating explosion sounds. There is no music. In this aspect Alien Invaders is at the same level of nearly every other game of the era.

As a poorly executed Space Invaders knock-off, it is hard to justify buying, or spending the time tracking down this game. Especially with the superior and much more widely available Space Invaders on the Atari 2600. Of course, it you're looking to buy any Arcadia 2001 games you're most likely more concerned about collecting than the actual gameplay quality. But if you're just starting a collection for the system, I'd recommend starting with a more refined game like Breakaway, or perhaps Cat Trax, which both at least have some intrinsic gameplay value.