Arcade Space Invaders Flaw.

[Aswald]

Most people here are familiar with the so-called "death row" method used in Space Invaders- you leave the 4 rightmost columns of invaders alone, shoot all others except for one 2 or 3 columns to the left of that block, and then shoot at UFOs while waiting for the block to move just above the ground- the "death row," where they could not shoot you.

I remember a number of odd glitches in the arcade version. One I'm not sure of- it's been so long- is this: sometimes, when the lowest invaders reach the "death row," your base blows up as though it had been shot, even though it wasn't- you lost a life.

Did this really happen, or what?

[NE146]

Yes, this happens. It usually happens in Space Invaders Part 2 or Deluxe. If I recall correctly it never happens in the original Space Invaders.

This, plus the annoying tendency for the UFO's to drop reinforcements and of course the splitting invaders are what makes the sequel so much harder :angry:

[Aswald]

I seem to recall it happening in both versions. Are there any pros out there who played these versions long enough- and with better memories than mine- to be sure?

Come to think of it, it did happen more often in Part 2...I think.

[NE146]

I quite honestly have never seen it in part 1. However, you know who would know for sure is OPCODE. After picking apart the arcade code for his ports to the Colecovision the guy knows every single bug and trick in the book for both Space Invaders! And I aint foolin :)

[NE146]

You mean this?

http://home.ptd.net/~scottith/SI.PNG

FYI: the VCS version also does this

Yeah sorta.. but in that pic it looks like the invaders have touched the bottom of the screen already and successfully "invaded" thus blowing up your base and making the game automatically over. Was that the case in the pic? Or were you able to play more afterwards (minus one life of course).

Interesting how the bottom row invaders turned to the top row though.. gawdamn I need to start playing more so I can remember shit like this happening :P

[SFCfan]

It doesn't do this in the ORIGINAL TAITO VERSION, they just keep going until they leave the screen. In the versions with the "death row", you get game over because the aliens "successfully reached the Earth's surface" and therefore "invaded" x_x Earth (hence the name SPACE INVADERS LOL ).

[NE146]

It doesn't do this in the ORIGINAL TAITO VERSION, they just keep going until they leave the screen. In the versions with the "death row", you get game over because the aliens "successfully reached the Earth's surface" and therefore "invaded" x_x Earth (hence the name SPACE INVADERS LOL ).

Dude.. you don't understand. What we're talking about is the lowest row BEFORE they reach the earth. And yes we are talking about the ORIGINAL TAITO versions of Space Invaders, and Space Invaders Part 2 which I have logged on thousands of hours in since the 70's :P

See on this row, they can't kill you with their missiles.. and thus this brings about the "Death row" strategy where you wait until they are there, and shoot them.

However there is a BUG in Space Invaders part 2 where they reach that row, and you automatically die!! The game doesn't end however, you just lose a life... now if they REACH EARTH however, that is a totally different story. Your game is over if that happens. But again, that's NOT what we're talking about ;)

[Aswald]

I contacted someone who knew quite a bit about Space Invaders, and he said that frequently the hardware, not the program, in the machine caused glitches (such as the "free games" glitch I remembered, too). However, the "death row" glitch did not happen in the original, unless it was a hardware flaw, but it did sometimes happen in the Part 2 version. USA or Japanese versions did not seem to matter. There were others, too, such as the invaders just marching straight down on you while leaving "shadows" behind them.

[opcode]

There were others, too, such as the invaders just marching straight down on you while leaving "shadows" behind them.

The shadow behind big invaders was originally a "bug". They marched straight down as soon as the invader reached the right corner of the screen because a bit of the shadow is left exactly over the leftmost column used by the game to find if invaders has reached the left corner. So the game is fooled by thinking there are invaders touching both corners at the same time!
Interestingly Taito corrected this bug in Part II (but left the shadow) by explicitly removing this very bit of shadow every time the invader touched the left corner. Funny workaround (and a pain to emulate)...
By the way, I corrected the bug where invaders go straight down, as it was more annoying than fun IMHO...