When I think back to the dawn of mainstream video games, I can’t help but think that they were largely terrible, and then I’m amazed that the industry wasn’t killed off before it was really born. I’m especially dumbfounded at some of the games that achieve ‘classic’ status merely by being old.
Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. I could be looking back at some of these games with my Curmudgeon Goggles, since I didn’t really like some of these games when they were new. A perfect example is Space Invaders.
Space Invaders features you in a ship protecting the planet (presumably Earth) from throngs of invaders, ostensibly from Space. The invaders are in tight formation and will move slowly in one direction until one of the ships on the edge hits the side of the screen, then the entire formation will drop down slightly and go the other way. This continues until: all the alien ships are destroyed, the alien ships touch down, or you run out of ships. If you destroy all of their ships, they reappear faster and deadlier. If they manage to touch down, they kill us all. If you run out of spare ships, the aliens will touch down and kill us all.
There are four weird little shield-things that will soak up some shots from either you or the aliens, and UFOs occasionally scoot by that you can try to shoot for bonus points, but I just couldn’t get into it. Even when it was relatively new, I couldn’t get into it, and I typically skip right over it when it’s included in some classic game compilation or other.