If there’s one thing I love, it’s a classic shmup. If there’s another thing I love, it’s weird modern takes on old games. Space Invaders is hardly the only game to get this treatment, but it gets it fairly regularly and usually in an official fashion.
They're HEEERE!
The latest rad version of this phenomenon is Space Invaders Infinity Gene. This is really more like a modern shmup (with touch screen controls, actual good ones) with Space Invaders graphics and a vector-art sensibility than it is like old-school Space Invaders, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it.
The idea is that as you score points in the game, you fill up a “Gene” bad that unlocks new abilities, and it seems like if you replay you can unlock multiple abilities per level that you use as you replay (I don’t know if the abilities get unlocked in order or if you have to be on a specific level to unlock a certain ability) giving you more and cooler things to do as you bust some pixels. All this accompanied by some great electronic music and sound effects.
Of course, if you missed it and have an Xbox 360, you should probably get your hands on Space Invaders Extreme, which goes a little more retro in the graphics area, and makes the whole thing into a crazy rhythmic affair with your shots and kills actually syncing into the music. (This game also exists on PSP and Nintendo DS, but I ain’t got those). And if you like THAT, don’t forget that Namco did something similar for Pac-Man and Galaga. I have and love them all, but there’s frankly on so much a man can play at a given time.
Late edit: Holy crap, this game can just up and create new levels based off songs in your library.
