Space Raiders

Invaders from outer space are attacking! The fate of the Earth is in your hands!

• JP release: 9th January 2003
• NA release: 19th April 2004
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Taito
• Publisher: Taito (JP), Mastiff (NA)
• NGC Magazine: N/A
• Mods Used: Widescreen Code

No, this isn’t related to the British crisps, but is a gritty reboot of Space Invaders. Incidentally, the PS2 version was called Space Invaders: Invasion Day in Europe, and those crisps are the only reason I can think of as to why they avoided the original name. This is another strange release in that Europe only got it on PS2, while North America only got it on GameCube.

Space Raiders begins with a 5-minute gritty cutscene of bugs invading Earth introducing the three characters: Ashley, who is hunting for her “fiancée”, Roy (the spelling is from the subtitles); Naji, a police officer that wants to avenge his lost squad; and Justin, a street kid who got knocked out while watching his friends get eaten. You won’t find anything else about the characters, though, and the game’s attempt at a twist (we’re invading their space with radio waves) is laughable. None of them get a resolution to their stories, you kill the final boss and it cuts to them later observing many more aliens arriving at Earth.

Picking these characters doesn’t really matter. The levels and story are the same, you just get a very slightly different gun. Despite the gritty nature of the graphics, you still just run left and right like the original game, and there are sometimes barriers – although these are far more of a detriment to you as enemies can shoot over them. There are six levels where you just shoot waves and waves of enemies, sometimes throwing grenades and collecting power-ups. The mixture of realistic graphics and these elements – on top of some enemies having plingy pew pew sounds or pixel effects – could work, but the game would need to be more self-aware and comedic for that.

One interesting system Space Raiders does have are your weapon upgrades. The more consecutive hits you make, the more powerful your weapons are. If enemies acted like the original Space Invaders, this could work really well, but enemies move in erratic patterns, they fall over and you have no idea how many hits they can take. You have to fire at a fast rate, so if one projectile kills an enemy and you’ve already fired another shot, you’ll lose your combo. Enemies can also dodge. On top of this, you also lose the combo whenever you get hit. You’d need a serious amount of dedication to maintain this combo, and it’s just not worth it for this game.

There are six short levels and the only punishment for dying is losing your high score. You have infinite lives and you get reset to three grenades when you come back to life, which means it’s all too easy to just lob all your grenades, shoot aimlessly until you die, get back up, throw grenades and repeat. And to top it all off, your high score in story mode isn’t even recorded – you have to play in a separate high score mode for that.

There is a silver lining to Space Raiders, though. It made Taito rethink the Space Invaders franchise and vowed to never do anything like this again, sticking to more iconic designs. I do think something like this could have worked, it just needed to be more comedic and have better gameplay. I’d make a blocky space invader ship be the final boss.

Poor

If at this point you’re still even entertaining the thought of picking up Space Raiders, stop, right now. To sum it all up quickly and concisely, its gameplay is a pathetic, 90-minute button-mashing marathon, and the two-player co-op mode is more of the same, just with another person to experience the pain along with you. Its graphics are an underwhelming experience to say the least, and the game’s incomparably horrendous voice acting will drive you to the brink of madness. Fans of modern shooters will have absolutely no use for this trite, monotonous junk, and fans of the original Space Invaders will simply be appalled at how Taito has butchered its classic gameplay into this one-dimensional mess. Regardless of what category you fall into, you don’t want to play Space Raiders.

Alex Navarro, GameSpot

Remake or remaster?

Just for the sake of history, it should be included in a Space Invaders compilation.

Official Ways to get the game

You can buy Space Raiders at your local corner shop. The crisps, not the game.

Europe

Japan

North America

GameCube Games by Date

2001: Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2003: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2004: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2007: Mar, Jun, Aug

arcade gamecube shooter space invaders Taito