Virtual Boy Complete - Game #14
There is no good way to review this title, it is literally just Space Invaders - one of the objective greatest games of all time - with virtually nothing extra. I don't know if I should give this 10 stars for being Space Invaders and bringing along all that time-tested gameplay, or 1 star for not doing anything new with Space Invaders and marketing itself as a compilaiton despite only having two near-identical games (Part 2 only adds a cutscene. That's it). I'll settle for 6, a bit of a compromise where simply how good Space Invaders is as a game wins out a little over the barebones nature of the "collection". I guess a port like this is justified for the time, where there wasn't emulation on consoles or budget download shops, so proper compilations would require multiple games to be remade in a time where "Old = Bad" was by far popular consensus, and a single retro game couldn't be distributed in a more honest way except on PC.
The 3D gimmick mode is probably the standout thing here, placing the invaders in front of one another could be a funky change of scenery, and maybe even change the gameplay loop a tiny bit by gaining visibility by shooting invaders, but in practice it comes off less as "Space Invaders but 3D" and more "Space Invaders but the screen is flat".
Additionally, this compilation suffers from a pet peeve I have with almost all Space Invaders ports: it doesn't have the moon backdrop from the original arcade version in 2D, it has it in the 3D version so it's certainly not a colour limitation, but it just doesn't exist in the 2D version.
There is no good way to review this title, it is literally just Space Invaders - one of the objective greatest games of all time - with virtually nothing extra. I don't know if I should give this 10 stars for being Space Invaders and bringing along all that time-tested gameplay, or 1 star for not doing anything new with Space Invaders and marketing itself as a compilaiton despite only having two near-identical games (Part 2 only adds a cutscene. That's it). I'll settle for 6, a bit of a compromise where simply how good Space Invaders is as a game wins out a little over the barebones nature of the "collection". I guess a port like this is justified for the time, where there wasn't emulation on consoles or budget download shops, so proper compilations would require multiple games to be remade in a time where "Old = Bad" was by far popular consensus, and a single retro game couldn't be distributed in a more honest way except on PC.
The 3D gimmick mode is probably the standout thing here, placing the invaders in front of one another could be a funky change of scenery, and maybe even change the gameplay loop a tiny bit by gaining visibility by shooting invaders, but in practice it comes off less as "Space Invaders but 3D" and more "Space Invaders but the screen is flat".
Additionally, this compilation suffers from a pet peeve I have with almost all Space Invaders ports: it doesn't have the moon backdrop from the original arcade version in 2D, it has it in the 3D version so it's certainly not a colour limitation, but it just doesn't exist in the 2D version.