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DS

North America

Space Invaders Extreme

by Steven Rodriguez - April 15, 2008, 3:00 am EDT
Total comments: 3

Yes, it's actually extreme. And awesome. Read our impressions and see the extremeness for yourself with our direct-feed video.

Space Invaders is one of the all-time classics of video games. Old-timers like me (at the ripe old age of 25) still get a kick out of playing the original black-and-white version with its simple graphics and sound effects, but trying to get a young'un with a five-second attention span to play it is impossible. Taito decided to do something for the Nintendo DS generation, turning the bland backdrop into a pulsating kaleidoscope of color, giving your ship an array of weaponry, making the invaders attack in different configurations and patterns, and adding a bumpin' interactive soundtrack.

The result of this extreme makeover is the appropriately-titled Space Invaders Extreme. The core Space Invaders gameplay still shows up in this extreme version, with waves of enemies making block formations at the top of the screen and your ship at the bottom. (All the regular action takes place on the touch screen of the DS.) However, one big change is that enemies are color-coded. If you can shoot down four enemies of the same color in a row, they'll drop a weapon power-up. These will grant your ship weapons like a wide laser that cuts through everything in its path, a bomb that explodes on impact, a five-wide broad shot, and others. Another one of the power-ups is a shield that can block incoming fire. All of the weapons have a time limit, though, so you're going to need to use what's available to either take out what you can or pick up another weapon power-up.

The invaders coming in have new tricks, too. Some of them carry shields of their own that can take a few hits before going down. Other types of enemies also take a few hits before dying, but that's because they're five times the size of the regular invaders. Some of them can split into micro-sized invaders, making them much harder to hit. Still other enemies are marked with a red outline. Destroying these will cause them to explode, taking out anyone in their immediate area. I don't know why invaders from space would stuff themselves with explosives. Then again, aliens are strange creatures.

During the course of gameplay, you'll sometimes launch a bonus round that feature shooting action that's more similar to Galaga than Space Invaders. These bonus rounds use the height of both DS screens and require you to shoot a target number of enemies. If successful, you'll return to regular play in fever mode, which will give you a more powerful version of one of the weapons. The same dual-height screen format also appears during boss battles. A giant invader, made up of little blocks will appear, and to win the stage you need to chip away at it to reach its red weak point. This is harder than it looks because you need to gauge your shots over the distance of both screens so that by the time your bullet reaches the top, it will hit where you want.

What makes Space Invaders Extreme so ... uh, extreme, is that all of the gameplay happens in the midst of rave-like sounds and color. The background colors constantly change as things happen on the screen. There's also a pretty neat HUD that's integrated into the background and edges of the playfield that uses futuristic-style text. As you do better and better, the game music picks up in intensity and complexity, complementing the beats that are produced every time you fire a weapon from your ship or hit an enemy. In fever mode, the colors and sounds are accentuated in a way that really gets you into it.

Psychedelic

The last game I remember combining the aspects of a shooter and interactive music was Rez, which was recently remade for Xbox Live Arcade. From what I played of Space Invaders Extreme, it looks like it's going to have the same vibe coming from it. With shooters you can get in the zone and reach a new level of concentration and reaction. With music games, you can zone out and become a part of the music. Combining the two? Let's just say that I really, really want to play Space Invaders Extreme again as soon as I can.

Talkback

AVJanuary 17, 2009

over the year with so much good buzz i picked it up yesterday.

i went to gamestop and they had a single copy. New price for $9.99 and i had a $5 gift card and I LOVE THIS GAME.

After all the hype and all the impressions WOW this game lives up to the hype. So much fun. So cool and worthwhile

Maybe one day I'll get around to filming the second half of my controller impressions.

Tybo68January 18, 2009

Yeah I bought it when it came out for twenty bucks and I'll be honest I would pay thirty for it because its that good.

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Genre Shooter
Developer Taito

Worldwide Releases

na: Space Invaders Extreme
Release Jun 17, 2008
PublisherSquare Enix
jpn: Space Invaders Extreme
Release Feb 21, 2008
PublisherTaito
eu: Space Invaders Extreme
Release Q3 2008
PublisherSquare Enix
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