Space Invaders
legendary shoot'em up game for Commodore 64, 2025
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This game is a C64 conversion of Space Invaders, the famous arcade game
created by Tomohiro Nishikado in 1978.
Space Invaders is a fixed shooter in which the player controls a laser cannon
by moving it horizontally across the bottom of the screen and firing at
descending aliens. The aim is to defeat five rows of eleven aliens that move
horizontally back and forth across the screen as they advance toward the
bottom of the screen. The player's laser cannon is partially protected by
several stationary defense bunkers that are gradually destroyed from the top
and bottom by blasts from either the aliens or the cannon.
The player defeats an alien and earns points by shooting it with the laser
cannon. As more aliens are defeated, the aliens' movement and the game's
music both speed up. Defeating all the aliens on-screen brings another wave
that is more difficult, a loop which can continue endlessly.
A special "mystery ship" will occasionally move across the top of the screen
and awards bonus points if destroyed.
The aliens attempt to destroy the player's cannon by shooting it as they
approach the bottom of the screen. If they reach the bottom, the alien
invasion is declared successful and the stage starts over with the loss of a
life (Novice and Medium difficulties) or the game ends tragically
(Arcade difficulty); otherwise, it ends generally if the player's last cannon
is destroyed by the enemy's projectiles.
The player earns extra lives based on the scores shown in the following
table:
Difficulty level First life at Subsequent lives every
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Novice 1000 2000
Medium 1500 3000
Arcade 1500 -
A maximum of 9 lives can be accumulated.
Options
There are 3 difficulty levels to choose from: Novice, Medium, Arcade.
You can toggle the autofire on/off.
There are 3 color sets to choose from.
There are 6 fire sound effects to choose from.
Controls
Joystick lever Move laser cannon left/right
Fire button Fire
[F7] Pause
[F1] Stop game and return to title screen
[F1] Reset ranking (while the top scores are displayed)
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Some useful keyboard shortcuts
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[PAUSE] - stop/continue game
[F9] - quick load game state
[F12] - quick save game state (still stored after leaving the site)
[F11] - toggle fullscreen mode
[ScrollLock] - quick switch control ports
[PageDown] - make a screenshot (320x200)