Android Invaders

Summary

There are few games out there that seem to channel Space Invaders, amongst them several modern takes, like Radiant, for example. However, the original is still basking in its cult status—and now you can play this game on your Android phone. The question is whether it’s still as fun today as it was back in the day…

Just in case there’s someone reading this who isn’t yet familiar with this game, here’s a quick rundown of the gameplay:

You control a spaceship from the bottom half of the screen and have to ward off aliens by firing at them. You’ll find thorough instructions in the Wikipedia article, as well as this interesting fact:

After the first few months following its release in Japan, the game became very popular … A shortage of 100-yen coins—and subsequent production increase—in Japan is attributed to the game.

Android Invaders is basically an emulator which allows you to play both Space Invaders and Space Invaders Deluxe (the originals, of course).

Download the ROM from the internet. There’s definitely a bit of nostalgia involved. Controls aren’t bad at all: they function using either your device’s sensors or the buttons on the display. Both options work just fine and have a certain charm about them. Android Invaders definitely has that arcade feeling, but my guess would be that if you never played this game in an arcade you might not enjoy Android Invaders as much: the graphics may not seem “up to date” enough.
 

After starting the game up for the first time you will have to download the corresponding ROMs for the internet—Android Invaders takes care of this for you. Via the menu button you can then:

Insert Coin
Select the number of players (1 Player/2 Player)
Switch the motion sensors on or off (Motion On/Off) (This option is switch on unless you change the settings. If you do choose to switch if off two blue button for navigating and one red button for shooting will appear.)
Switch up between Space Invaders and Space Invaders Deluxe (Upgrade/Downgrade)

You’ll find these options under More:

Sound On/Off
Fullscreen (on/off)
DIP Switches
About

The screen is pretty small if you’re in the normal mode, but the background does exude that arcade hall vibe. You don’t get the background image when you’re in fullscreen mode, and this option also didn’t run as smoothly on the G1. And while fullscreen didn’t cause the same problems in the Milestone, the sound didn’t work throughout the entire game.

Controls were easy enough using the motion sensor (tip the device to the left and right in order to navigate, and tap on the screen when you want to fire a round), but I preferred playing using the buttons on the display. That being said, it wasn’t quite as easy hitting the buttons using the G1 as when using the Milestone.

Bottom line:
Android Invaders will score with fans, nostalgics, and those among you who are young at heart. It doesn’t make much sense to me to judge the game by today’s standards, even though Android Invaders would still do quite well. The biggest attraction is of course being able to play the real Space Invaders game. Controls function really well, and even from today’s standpoint the game doesn’t strike me as dated.
 

Speed and Stability is satisfactory. There’s no cause for complaint when using the normal screen mode, but I found there to be some flaws when running the application in fullscreen.

The application can be downloaded free of charfe from the Android Market.