Now Playing: Space Invaders Extreme (DS & PSP)

 I wasn’t all that thrilled about picking up where I left off over 20 years ago when I stopped playing the original Space Invaders, but these latest “extreme” remakes are surprisingly fun and slick. The gameplay is mostly the same — you’re still shooting at relentless waves of pixelly invaders — but they’ve got new patterns, different sizes, and power-ups of their own. There are three different weapons you can pick up by shooting similarly colored enemy ships which make it easier to clear the field and peg those UFOs that sneak across the top of the screen. Take out the psychedelic saucers and you’ll get a bonus stage that is always surprisingly hard to fail, go figure. After a handful of attack stages you’ll do the boss battle thing against a few huge invaders who hurl more weapons fire at you than in some 2D shooters. I’m surprised nobody thought of a Space Invaders scrolling shooter sooner.

The DS and PSP versions don’t differ a lot. While the PSP looks sharp and vibrant, the DS hardware does an adequate job of recreating the visual gloss while only splitting up the action across the dual screens for boss battles. About 90% of the game is identical between the two handhelds, it’s really only a matter of which one you own or which version you find first. There’s not even any touchscreen stuff involved. I’m not certain about the PSP version as I’ve only played the demo but the game offers plenty of online multiplayer, time attack and ranking modes.

The presentation in both versions is really great and does as good a job at reinvigorating the aging classic as Pac-Man C.E. did last summer on Xbox Live Arcade. I’ve laid off playing since the later stages have gotten a lot harder but Space Invaders Extreme is a game I’ll come back to repeatedly when something more involving (Professor Layton) or casual (Petz: Bunniez) just doesn’t hit the spot.