Space Invaders Revolution

Nostalgia can be fantastic. Reminiscing about events, places or people almost forgotten but whose memory still generates a warm glow is one of the tricks the human psyche plays to keep us happy. The rule is, though, to never revisit the past. Leave it in your memory - at least that seems to be the conclusion to draw from Space Invaders Revolution.

Yep. Most people of a certain age can probably remember the first time they took control of a blocky turret and saved the earth from the slow descent of five lines of 11 weird icons we understood to be space aliens. Together with Pac-Man, Space Invaders marked the point computer games took a grip on popular culture. But almost thirty years on, is there any need to relive ancient glories? Surely games have moved on a bit since.

And indeed they have. To be fair, it's something publisher Rising Star would agree with, which is why it's added Revolution to the title of this particular version of Space Invaders. "Rehash" might have been a more honest description, but an attempt has been made to update this slice of the past. Ironically though, the main problem with the game is the one that made Space Invaders such a success in the first place: It's an incredibly pure concept. Simple graphics, simple controls (move left and right, fire one bullet at a time) and even simpler gameplay; keep shooting the aliens until you have destroyed them all and the screen refills, or until you have run out of cannons. It's almost impossible to improve on the purity of the concept especially when you've timed a shot just right to hit the last, fast-moving invader as it prepares to descend to your level and take you out.

But playing the classic version of Space Invaders as presented in Space Invaders Revolution also underlines our nostalgia problem. What was so good then isn't exciting now. In fact, it's almost boring. Given a copy, you'd probably load up, have a couple of games, shoot down the mothership and work on your high score before switching off. With games such as Advance Wars Dual Strike or Nintendogs available, why waste any more time on it?

Rising Star does have an answer; achieve certain high scores in the classic mode and you'll unlock special powers such as faster firing and multiple cannons for the modernised New Age version of the game. Sadly however, this revised version of the game only demonstrates you can't improve on the original.

It tries its best, with twenty levels of Space Invader variation available. Each is located on an invasion map of the world, so you'll end up fighting a doppleganger invader in India which reflects your movements and packs a rapid fire laser. In London there's a Union Jack formation of invaders but you have to shoot them in a certain order. In China there are loads of tiny invaders while in Peru the individual blocks that make up a supersized invader must be destroyed. It's a reasonable attempt, but as the subtle changes like the ability of your cannon to fire slightly faster than the original demonstrate, this doesn't trigger the feelings of nostalgia of the original nor is it compelling enough in the face of 2005's modern games. So somewhere between the two, this game slowly slides into unloved mediocrity. Steven Spielberg was wrong. The only good close encounter is of the first kind.