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Return of the Space Invaders
pashdown writes "Get your two-liter bottles of Shasta and your all-Rush mixtapes ready! In honor of the 25th Anniversary of Space Invaders, Taito has commissioned Namco to remake the classic arcade game. The only thing not nostalgic is the price, increased from one quarter to two." We had a sneak peek of this cabinet as a Slashdot Games story a couple of weeks back.
I've missed this game! You used to only be able to play it in small-town pizza shops anymore. I wouldn't mind owning one myself...it would make a great conversation piece for the livingroom.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
What's surprised me is that I can often get in a quick arcade fix at the local quickie mart or laundromat for a quarter. Sure, anything reasonably new will be 50c, but a single quarter gets me as much fun as it did in 1985.
Wouldn't that be roughly the equivalent of playing Pac-Man for a 1980's dime?
As for this game, are they still planning to package it with QIX? That's one of the old school games I miss. That and my favorite game of all time, Mr. Do!. If anyone knows where a working Mr. Do! is within 100 miles of Dallas, lemme know and I'm there with a roll of quarters!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Although the game itself will not change, inflation has taken its toll. One play will now cost 50 cents, compared with 25 cents a generation ago.
Speaking from an outsiders standpoint, don't arcade games today let you set how much it costs to play? Not to say I wouldn't use it for 50 cents, but why mess with a classic?
If there was demand for it, it would have been remade, and I haven't seen space invaders in an arcade for 10 years. The only arcade games to be remade and be successful are Mrs. Pacman and Galaga, most of which fell apart after 20 years, with the survivors suffering from horrible screen burn. Some games that used to be ubiquitous, like TMNT and Mortal Kombat II, are now becoming increasingly scarce, but will probably not be remade just because they were popular in the contemporary sense only.
As discussed here , there was a trick with the original game that allowed for ultra high scores. Basically it involved timing the shots at the bonus flying saucer, to maximise 300 points whenever possible.
;)
I found out about this trick as I met Mr Furrer through work just recently. Basically many a night was wasted in The Bombshelter at Waterloo University (Ontario, Canada) playing that game before he gleamed on the pattern. Last he knew, he had the world record for Space Invaders.
Now he's a J2EE programmer working on Weblogic platforms. Unfortunately playing Space Invaders never turned into a full time career for him.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
yes there are LOTS of quarter games left. Many good arcades (the ones that are left) have entire rows for $0.25 a play.
Hell Just last month 3 friends and I scared the hell out of a bunch of kids at the arcade near me as we hogged the Gauntlet machine for 3 hours.
nothing like freaking out teens by seeing 4 35-37 years olds in their arcade screaming and yelling at each other playing a video-game.
only the asshat operators are charging more per play for the classic games.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I picked up a non-working Mr. Do! a couple of years back, was gonna do the MAME cabinet thing but never found the space to put the cab.
:). The speaker was unplugged, so the guy I got it from just assumed it was busted. I finally managed to cobble together a cable to interface into an old Tandy RGB monitor. So instead of a nice 19" screen, I play on a sad 9" screen :(
As it turns out, the only thing wrong with the game was that the monitor was blown (and no, I'm not up to re-capping it, thanks
I've been debating looking into the cheap LCD monitors you can get for PSX/GC/XBOX, and basically making the world's stupidest gameboy. The original Mr. Do! board fits almost perfectly into a standard sized briefcase, so it would be a fun luggable to show off.
Anyone know if any of these screens can accept straight RGB inputs? Or are they composite/s-video only?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Space Invaders reminds me of a time, a time that seems perfect to me.
For me, I was a youngster in NYC in late 70's thru early 80's. Penn Station was my playground. They had all the videogames you could think of down there. They even had those old football games with the rollers that you had to smack at with the palm of your hand, which would inevitably get pinched by rolling too far and falling into the small crevice next to the ball.
All games were 25 cents. All of them.
The Penn Station arcades are no longer there. It doesn't seem the same to me.
A NYC slice of pizza and a water down soda, invariably from one of the 50 "Original Rays" would sustain me for hours of game playing. The grease would run down your arm...but you didn't care. It was all about the game. Even now, the smell of a NYC slice takes me back to that time.
Most pizzerias back then had a couple of game machines. Most do not these days.
I remember a small videogame place named Simon's on 8th avenue between 17th and 18th st., if I remember correctly. I'd walk there from JHS 70 and play pacman and asteroids and missile command for hours. I'll never forget the time this guy was playing and left 50 cents in the game for me to play as he left. He was my hero that evening.
It's no longer there. Some hip new eatery has long ago replaced it.
But Space Invaders was my firs love. How I loved that game. Beautiful in its simplicity. When I run into a machine, I have to play at least one game. No matter where I am. It brings me back to fun days. Days not longed by worries about job and mortgages and terrorism. Kids need those days.
I hope this release of a classic will give kids of today memories like I have.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
This site has versions of Pacman and Space Invaders which run inside an Excel spreadsheet.
Parents always complained about the place, as parents are want to do. Not that anything ever went down there. The owners were parents themsevles and wanted to make sure it was just a fun place to hang out.
Long story short the mall they were located in got tired of hearing parental complaints so they forced them out by jacking up the stall price quarter after quarter after quarter until it got too pricy. About a year after it left, the mall sold the stall and the one next to it to a Fun Factory.
Now, the place is all lit up, bright and shiny, and costs three to four times as much for each game. There a couple of guys who stand behind the counter and occasionally play a game or two, but it is now home to a few mall rat gangs and has had more fights break out in the last couple of years over high scores than the old place ever did in its lifetime.
When I was 19, BattleZone was 50 cents a play - I _loved_ that game.
;-).
Being a starving college student, however, I eventually ran out of quarters (not just because of BattleZone, but...)
Had also just taken my first programming course as a math elective about then (was a bio major at the time - and had just found out that I _hated_ O-chem) - my grades suffered considerably as I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time in the comp lab - but it turns out that that was the only programming course available ('twas BASIC over teletype on a CDC-750 timeshare, but what did I know?)
Anyhow, having run out of money, disillusioned with my major, and a BattleZone junkie, what could I do? I Joined The Army - and became a DAT (Dumb Ass Tanker). Spent the next six years running over stuff and/or blowing it up - great fun! And, to put this back on topic, spending an inordinate number of quarters on Space Invaders, Galaga, et al in various kasernes scattered throughout Bavaria, etc.
After a while, of course, I got put on a desk job (by this time I had obtained an Apple ][+ out of personal savings and was writing database analysis / report-generation stuff for our unit on my spare time - higherups found out about this and over my protests pulled me off my track and into Operations) - so wasn't having fun running over / blowing up stuff any longer... luckily I'd been saving up for college all this time (VEAP - the GI bill had been discontinued while I was in service).
So, I got out from under Uncle Sugar and went back to school - got the CS degree, and the rest is OT.
But, a contributing factor to my life's taking that particular turn was indeed a coin-op videogame of that day... and that sense of nostalgia (as others have described here) is a powerful motivator - perhaps I'll wait until the furor dies down and grab one of those SI boxes for myself (I'll justify it as really being for my young son, of course
Have fun!
OldFart 8-)
Odd, I never noticed it, but it's rather true. Interesting how cabinets are more sophisticated in Japan (networked play for several games, like the gundam game that's rather popular over there) tends to draw people to the game centers [arcades]. But yeah, I tried to think of games at the american arcades and did only see ones that couldn't be played at home (gun based shooters, bemani games, golf, etc.).
That being said, DDR is great, and for 50c I can get 5 songs out of the machine at my local arcade. Much cheaper than anywhere else, and more enjoyable than playing at home (you get the fact that you're performing in front of people, plus the pads are usually much better quality.)
I know it deserves respect as one of the earliest, but the game was very weak compared to most of its close successors. I never found it engaging, even when it was almost the only option.
Some years later, an arcade in my hometown had a Space Invaders machine running for free. No one touched it. I think I played a couple of games and got bored... I can't help thinking the same fate will follow this venture. Sounds like something no sane arcade owner would buy... more of an executive toy.
Now Donkey Kong, Centipede, Tempest... any of those I would pick up and play with some interest.
True story: So I wandered into Gameworks (Seattle) a few months back. Among the multi-player driving games and VR stuff, at the back in a corner was a row of classics.
There was a 13-year old shooting away on Galaga. I watched him for a moment, and in a pause he noticed me and said "Man, this is the most awesome game ever!"
Man did that restore faith in the youth of today.
Yup, actually according to the first inflation calculator I found on Google, $0.25 in 1980 is $0.59 in 2002. Although, on the other hand, computer hardware has generally gotten much, much cheaper, so it seems entirely reasonable that the game should be cheaper in real terms.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD