I thought I’d follow up my review of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man with one focusing on what, in my opinion, is perhaps the only other game that comes close to the yellow, dot munching circle guy in terms of its sheer, iconic status.

Of course, the game in question is Space Invaders; but is it a disaster, like the unfortunate Pac-Man port?

It’s actually not, at all. It’s visually quite different in feel to the arcade original, with its overall aesthetic necessitated by the lack of oomph in the Atari 2600 hardware.

That Space Invaders was brought home via the 2600 at all is impressive; what was created, as far back as 1980, is even more so.

Though it doesn’t look much like Space Invaders unless you squint, all of the important elements are present and correct; the shields, the bonus UFO, the aliens accelerating at panic-inducing rates as you destroy more and more of them.

It’s got limitations, such as the lack of horizontal space you can use to pick off the aliens with your lasers, but for the most part it’s a nicely smooth and fast adaptation of the arcade game.

The box makes a ridiculous claim, as it falls into the ‘contains X video games’ trap, where X is ‘number of variations on basic Space Invaders included’.

It is worth noting that there’s a lot of these, though, even by the standards of its time, where these variations were just added in willy nilly to pretty much all games.

It certainly does provide you with all kinds of weird and wacky ways to play, if you want to challenge yourself with things like invisible invaders, moving shields and much, much more besides (believe it or not, there are a jaw dropping 112 variations included!).

There are plenty of other, better single screen shooters available for the Atari 2600, but when Space Invaders originally arrived, it really did bring the phenomenon home.

Until Pac-Man launched, Space Invaders was the top selling cartridge for the Atari 2600; despite its technological limitations, it’s no lazy port and it definitely earned every one of those 6 million plus sales.

It’s a game that really sold the Atari to millions of people and, for a short time, made it feel as if you could bring the arcade home, despite the difference in quality between the home and coin-op versions.

These days, I’d recommend numerous other shoot ’em ups for the 2600 (such as Phoenix, to name one example), but this version of Space Invader will always have a special place in my heart, and every now and then it’s nice to take it for a little spin, for old time’s sake.