I've been playing a bit of the Atari 8-bit version of Space Invaders recently. This was actually my first ever contact with Space Invaders and, for those unaware, it is a very inaccurate port of Taito's classic. The invaders look different, there are no bases to hide behind, there's a weird rocket ship at the side of the screen that the invaders emerge from… and I love it.
I'd always believed that this was a pretty fondly regarded version of Space Invaders, but looking at a few comments from over the last ten years or so it seems that it most certainly is not — primarily for its inaccuracy. Thing is, though, that inaccuracy is precisely why I like this version of Space Invaders. I like it more than the arcade original — perhaps because it was my own first contact (no pun intended) with the game, but also because it offers something unique and distinctive rather than just trying to ape the arcade experience as closely as possible on hardware of the time.
I guess the argument against that is that if you're going to do that, you probably shouldn't call it Space Invaders, but, well, the concept of the game is the same, and the basic mechanics — bases to hide behind aside — are identical. So what if it looks different? I'd much rather play a bunch of different versions of Space Invaders, each of which have their own unique idiosyncrasies, than a bunch of near-identical versions.
I seem to be in the minority for this viewpoint, but that's nothing new, is it? 🙂
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