THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE

SPECTRAL INVADERS

PUBLISHER
Bug Byte

AUTHOR
Dave Lawson

YEAR
1982

DESCRIPTION
A straight copy of the all-time classic, Space Invaders.


CONTROLS:
Caps Shift - Left
Z - Right
Space - Fire


INSTRUCTIONS
For those of you who were born after 1992, or have been living
in a hole since 1975 (in which case, why are you interested in
the Spectrum?): Move along the bottom of the screen shooting the
little monsters in an attempt to save the earth. They also shoot
at you, so be careful. Blast the fast flying motherships at the
top of the screen for bonus points. If the aliens land, or you
run out of lives, it's game over! Shoot vertical columns off the
sides of the alien fleet; this means they descend slower (longer
lateral movement before descending).

CHEATS
No information on this. Doubt if any cheats would significantly
improve the playability of this game (unless you count hacking
the code so that it turns into Manic Miner!). Infinite lives
would only mean boredom would set in quicker...

SEQUELS
No direct sequels, although naturally their were many other Space
Invaders games out there.

SCORES RECEIVED
Unknown. Very early in the Spectrum career. Anyone got Crash #1?

URL
ftp://ftp.gui.uva.es/pub/sinclair/games/s/specinvd.zip

GENERAL FACTS
Arguably the first arcade copy available for the Spectrum (OK,
apart from Thro' the Wall), and certainly the first Space
Invaders clone (Well, certain as I can be with a ropey memory,
but I think it was before Space Raiders). Certainly the most
heavily advertised of the early Spectrum games (full page adverts
on the back covers of many computer magazines at the time). The
collision detection is pretty bad and the movement can seem a bit
jerky sometimes.

NOTES
Probably best left alone unless it will bring back waves of
nostalgia (it does for me!). Psion's Space Raiders _is_ better,
but all the other Spectrum games did to Space Invaders what SI
previously did to Pong.  Dave Lawson apparently wrote this before
even seeing a Spectrum, using a preprint of the Users Manual.
Under those circumstances, I'd say it's a pretty impressive
result.