Space Invaders, 1980 Atari/Rick Maurer (20 From Atari 2600 #5)

At the top five of this series we start with one of the greatest world-wide arcade smash hits of all time: SPACE INVADERS! Even with different-looking invaders and sound effects this holds up pretty well to the arcade classic. And in this one, you can have up to 112 different game variations! Although, they are generally 16 different variations with 8 different themes. You can have regular play, moving bunkers, zigzagging enemy fire, fast enemy fire, invisible aliens, moving bunkers AND zigzag shots, and a general combination of these. Then there is also 2-player simultaneous play, or 2-player alternating play, 2 players controlling the same ship and firing (yeah, that kind of sucks), or players alternating firing capabilities (also lame). Depending on the game variation the UFO is either 100 or 200 (usually 200). The invaders don't look like the arcade version but they are pretty interesting looking at least, and score in order from bottom to top: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 points. Learning to use the bunkers to hide behind and sneak shots out from the edges at your enemies is helpful here, as is knowing that the invaders don't seem to shoot more than 2 shots at once, perhaps allowing you to slide under the REALLY low enemies and fire up shots before they can blast you. Rapid-fire is given in this game and even with just one shot at a time you can fire up a quick shot as soon as the first one has hit something. This is especially useful when you hold reset and power up the game to give yourself DOUBLE SHOTS! The game is considerably easier when you do this. But if you want the game to be HARDER, set the difficulty switch to A and make your ship fatter and harder to avoid enemy fire! Great port of the arcade smash, with little tweaks to graphics and gameplay that are quite welcome (apart from both players controlling the ship). Programmed by Rick Maurer.