About A Game: Space Invaders Get Even (WiiWare)
The Space Invaders series had some spinoffs in recent years with gameplay that differs quite a bit from the original, like the pretty well known Space Invaders Extreme that still partially sticks to the original formula, or the terrible gritty reboot Space Invaders: Invasion Day on PS2.
Space Invaders Get Even on the Nintendo Wii is another spinoff of the series, with even less gameplay overlap than these games. It only shares some sprites, and oddly enough uses the original as a story hook. It also seems to have been completely forgotten, which is too bad because it is genuinely very good.
The game is basically a twin-stick shooter, in which you move an invader UFO around through human cities and military installations. A swarm of the classic space invader sprites moves around your ship, ready to serve as your weapons. You can fire them off as different “weapon types”; there’s a standard shot, homing projectiles, they can gather into a big ball and smash down like a bomb, or turn into a big bouncy ball that repeatedly jumps onto targets, and lastly there’s a drill attack that will repeatedly do damage as it drills.
Being on the Wii, Get Even uses some of the platform’s unique features. The game uses a wiimote and nunchuck scheme, with the wiimote pointer used to aim your attacks, and shaking both controllers up and down regenerating your invaders. I played on hardware, but this should be easy enough to emulate, using a mouse for the pointer and just binding a button for controller shaking.
Each stage has an objective, like destroying certain buildings or enemies, freeing captive invaders, or abducting cows. There are also boss stages where you get to fight a giant superweapon like a ship or a spider mech. An especially cool boss design is a huge fighter plane hidden under the Nazca bird shape and resembling it. The gameplay is very focused on the stage’s time limit. You can get more time by destroying enemies or regular buildings, or collecting important items, and you will lose time when you take damage. You will also lose some of your invaders when getting hit, and running out of time or invaders is a game over.
The story directly references the original game all the way through, and is mostly told through radio chatter of the human defenders. Thirty years ago, in the original Space Invaders, humanity successfully fought off the invasion through their special weapon called the Core Cannon, which is the thing you control in the original. But over time, humans turned these weapons against each other and many were destroyed or forgotten. Now the invaders are back and out for revenge, and only seven Core Cannons are left to mount a defense against them. The radio chatter is very well done and often funny, like when it references classic Space Invaders strategies, or calls out the “majestic twelve” (the title of a later Space Invaders game).
There are seven areas with three stages each, the last stage always being the boss fight. It’s a decent amount of content, with my playthrough taking 3-4 hours. One thing to be aware of is that the main package for the game only contains the first episode, and the rest has to be installed as DLC. With the DLC you can also choose different designs for your main UFO, like a classic pixelated Space Invaders bonus UFO, or space ships from other Taito shmups.
Apparently on the Wii Shop the DLC was split up into three packs which had to be bought separately, and the main package also was not free, selling for 2000 points total, which seems to be around 20 dollars/euros and doesn’t seem to bad. Nowadays of course that doesn’t really matter, since you can’t buy it at all. It’s too bad that this game did not get a modern rerelease, but I guess emulating or reworking a Wii game is a bit too much effort to justify.
I played this game very recently and enjoyed it a lot, which prompted me to write about it (and skip ahead over the like 15 other games I meant to write about). Here’s my playthrough if you’d like to take a peek at the game: https://youtu.be/-pR82hNHsOw