Space Invaders was released in 1980 for the Atari 2600 (then Atari VCS) game system. It has the distinction of being the first arcade game to the officially licensed for any home game console, and would become the first “killer app” for the Atari 2600 – people would buy the console specially to play Space Invaders, the game was that popular!
The fact that the game was even successfully ported to the Atari 2600 is impressive, given the limitations of the hardware – it was a task thought impossible, but through clever use of the somewhat unique way the system worked, a way was found to re-create most of the experience of the arcade game, albeit scaled down.
The basic concept of Space Invaders is a simple, well known one: You control a mobile base on bottom of the screen, firing up at waves of enemy invaders slowly but surely descending to the ground. Protecting you are 3 shields which are slowly chipped away at when damaged by enemy fire, or your own shots.
As you destroy the enemy invaders, they speed up, with the final invader moving at top speed down to your level. Additionally, while all this is going on, enemy motherships will sometimes fly by at the top of the screen. These can be shot for bonus points because, of course, since this is an arcade game, the goal is to get as high a score as you can in ever-repeating rounds of action against the invaders!
Porting of the game to the 2600 required a few sacrifices, of course – the overall play area is smaller, with fewer invaders on screen per round. That, however, is the only major difference between this version and the arcade original. On a whole the gameplay is kept intact, and even expanded on with multiple game variations available on the cartridge, with moving shields, moving enemy shots, invisible invaders, and more, in both single and multi-player modes! The difficulty switches of the Atari 2600 can be used to enlarge or shrink your base, making it a bigger or smaller target and thus make the game harder or easier as well.
The game has a well known bug that many players exploit to speed up their progress in this version of the game – if you hold down reset while powering on the Atari 2600, you will cause the game to allow you double shots! That’s right, twice the firepower to use against the invading forces above you. It’s pretty cool, and adds a little more variety to the game.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
All in all, Space Invaders is a solid game. While basic, it does represent the beginnings of the entire shooter genre and is as faithful to the original arcade game as it can reasonably be given the hardware. For me it’s always a fun time when playing some Atari!