Space Raiders - a tasty little game.
You may be wondering why it has taken me so long to finally bring up the subject of space invaders? Surely this must be one of the first computer games that anyone encounters? Well, you have to remember that in our household the Spectrum was bought for education purposes only. So these little guys had to wait for me to catch up to them. Admittedly we did have Arcadia in the very beginning , I still blame this on my father's one moment of weakness , but it wasn't the classic Space Invaders/Raiders game. So although this was released in 1982, it did take me about a year to to play it. This version was Space Raiders from Psion Software.
Now I'm really hoping I don't have to explain the game play of this game to anyone. Oh, okay then, now are your ready for this? Shoot them, shoot them all, before they get you. On the upside you do have buildings to hide behind and an extra space vehicle zipping along the top to also try and hit. But that is all there is to it. This was my first experience of this type of game , yes I know that is rather sad. ( It took me even longer to come into contact with Pacman, but that is another story).
It was a game I immediately took a liking to , not so much for the thrill of shooting the aliens but because I thought the aliens looked , well, kind of cute. It's another genius bit of computer design, we may be defending the world from evil aliens, but for most of the population these wee folks weren't the stuff of nightmares. In fact for people of my generation the top line did look a little similar to the 'Smash Martians' from the mashed potato ad campaign.
It wasn't long before my father had also made the acquaintance of the descending hoards, his great achievement was to figure out that you could use the buildings as a shield and shoot through them to gain access to the aliens. Which he gleefully employed to trounce my high scores at every opportunity (until he realised that they could fire back through the holes - which of course was highly unfair) . So for a game with a very short plot and ( it has to be said -sorry) quite simplistic game play , why have I included it? Was I brilliant at it ? Nope. Was I addicted to it? Not in the way I was addicted to the Ultimate games like Atic Atac and Sabrewulf.
It wasn't long before my father had also made the acquaintance of the descending hoards, his great achievement was to figure out that you could use the buildings as a shield and shoot through them to gain access to the aliens. Which he gleefully employed to trounce my high scores at every opportunity (until he realised that they could fire back through the holes - which of course was highly unfair) . So for a game with a very short plot and ( it has to be said -sorry) quite simplistic game play , why have I included it? Was I brilliant at it ? Nope. Was I addicted to it? Not in the way I was addicted to the Ultimate games like Atic Atac and Sabrewulf.
This game is here because of the aliens, and how they invaded my world during the 80's. It has to be said that as far as food went the household I lived in had pretty bland tastes ( sorry Dad) , we lived a pretty Ready Salted type of life. Then I discovered the below and these became linked in my funny little head with this game. To this day I can still taste the chutney flavoured crisps as soon as I look at the screen.
For me this game sums up this particular period of the 80's where food suddenly became exciting and full of flavour. Also the fact that I had the choice to pick something other than Ready Salted and in the computer gaming world pick something other than educational software. A game where I could just blast away without thinking of plot or mapping. Although I always felt a little sorry for the aliens, particularly the lower line of red ones , who I always thought might be distantly related to Horace from Horace Goes Skiing etc.
But does the story end there....well no....in a kind of up to date twist the other day I unearthed my Atari Flashback console and loaded up the Atari version of this. I spent the next hour in utter delight, the Atari version may not bring back the taste of chutney crisps, but it brought back an awful lot of happiness.
Sometimes in this very complicated world you need simplicity, not every day is a day for chutney flavour crisps ....
But does the story end there....well no....in a kind of up to date twist the other day I unearthed my Atari Flashback console and loaded up the Atari version of this. I spent the next hour in utter delight, the Atari version may not bring back the taste of chutney crisps, but it brought back an awful lot of happiness.
Sometimes in this very complicated world you need simplicity, not every day is a day for chutney flavour crisps ....