I tried very hard to like Space Raiders. Games based on franchises from the classic era of video gaming are few and far between. But alas, Space Raiders has none of the charm that Space Invaders exuded in 1978. The result is a pitiable game that mercifully lasts under an hour and 45 minutes. I’ll try to keep this review short so it won’t take me more time to write about this game than it did to play it.

Space Raiders kind of picks up where many a game of Space Invaders ended: your missile-shooting base defense has failed and the aliens have landed on the earth. The aliens are overrunning the city and killing everything in their path.

The player takes the role of one of three characters; each of whom has reasons to fight the aliens due to those they have lost in the invasion. The story is not worth mentioning. Scratch that. Let’s just say I’m trying hard to forget it. It doesn’t add anything to the game so it is irrelevant anyway.

Gameplay is almost as simple as Space Invaders. The playfield is very much like a Space Invaders playfield. The player’s character is confined to the bottom of the screen. He moves back and forth along the bottom shooting at invaders as they advance on his position. (This changes in one stage, but I’m not telling in case someone actually wants to play through the whole game.) In many stages there are barrels or crate-like structures that fulfill the same functions as the three shields served in Space Invaders. They are also vulnerable to attack and will disappear after enough hits.

Unlike Space Invaders, the player’s character in Space Raiders can take several hits before dying. A health meter keeps track of how much life remains. The player also has a larger arsenal of weapons. In addition to the standard, unlimited–ammo weapon, the player also has access to grenades and a character-specific special weapon. These latter two weapons require secondary-weapon ammo to use. There are power-ups that make the main weapon more effective, speed-up the character, grant limited invincibility, stop time, increase life, temporarily clone the character, and add to the secondary weapon’s ammo supply. Power-ups come from defeating enemies, destroying items and shooting down the UFO-like craft that periodically wander across the screen.

The game begins to fall apart almost immediately. The graphics are low quality, the sound poor, and the dialogue that moves what passes as a story along has to be about the worst I’ve heard since House of the Dead 2. The player dies a lot in Space Raiders. It doesn’t matter though – there are unlimited continues. As a matter of fact, dying becomes a tactic to get more secondary-weapon ammo as when revived the player always starts with three units of ammo.

The enemies are varied enough and can be deadly, but they are animated poorly and just look bad. They can advance all the way to the player’s location without ending the game. At that point the player can engage the roll/evade maneuver by pressing either the left or right shoulder button and actually drive the invaders back by hitting them with his momentarily invulnerable body. At the end of each stage there is a boss character to defeat, but it still pretty much consists of dodging incoming and putting out lots of fire until he dies. It just does not work.

I played once all the way through with the character Justin. I then played a little way into the game with the other two characters: Ashley and Naji. I regret to report, for the sake of replay value, it just did not seem to make much difference. I also tried the two-player cooperative mode. With the players bumping into each other as they fight, it is not fun either.

So, who should buy Space Raiders? Someone like me who has made it a life goal to own every game based on a classic-arcade franchise for a start. (I’m one of the four people who actually purchased the Pac-Man Fever game.) I probably won’t play it again, but it is in my collection and I can show it off as Space Invaders’ effect on the video game industry a full 26 years after the arcade game’s release. Otherwise, though my heart wants to tell everyone to buy it so companies will make more updates of classic gaming properties, I have to say it should be left on the shelf – even at the bargain $19.99 retail price.