Aliens Invade for iPhone

19.12.2009
Anyone who grew up in proximity to a video arcade in the 1970s or '80s remembers Space Invaders. And anyone who grew up afterward has probably seen the game, maybe in a movie, on some , or even on one of those cheap joystick contraptions that you could plug into your TV and play a dozen old Atari 2600 games for a fraction of what people paid for them 25 years ago.

Space Invaders was a great game because it was so simple. You moved a gun platform back and forth to shoot out lines and rows of slow-but-incessant UFOs that are encroaching on your position.

But Space Invaders wasn't a perfect game. For one thing, the technology and the programming of the time limited its scope and ambition. Kids today, weaned on 3D graphics, would scoff at Space Invaders' 8-bit primitivism. And those of us who have certain nostalgia for the game find ourselves wanting something... more.

What would "more" look like? How about auto-cannons, homing missiles and cluster bombs? How about better, full-color graphics? How about up-to-date sound effects, and no more of that annoying "bum-bum-bum-bum" soundtrack and chirping sounds every time you shoot? How about frickin' lasers?

How about app for the iPhone and iPod touch?

The graphics are colorful and marginally three-dimensional, although you're still blasting away in a two-dimensional battlespace. But what a blast! Instead of lamely chirping guns and a thin bass soundtrack, your guns sound like fireball-blazing howitzers and the invading aliens descend accompanied by doom-heralding kettle drums. A robotic voice informs what kind of power-up you've nabbed. (Incongruously, the power-ups drop from those advanced alien spacecraft in what appear to be wooden crates assisted by parachutes -- I don't really understand why, but there you go.)