Stellar Invaders - 1982 IBM PC Space Invaders in Your Browser
Insert Coin
How To Play
You command the last laser cannon between Earth and five rows of descending invaders. Move with the arrow keys, fire with the space bar. On a phone or tablet, use the on-screen buttons.
- Mystery saucer: 50 to 300 points, it crosses the top of the screen when you least expect it
- Top row invader: 30 points
- Middle row invaders: 20 points
- Bottom row invaders: 10 points
- Extra life: every 1000 points, just like Space Strike in 1982
The four bunkers absorb fire from both sides and crumble pixel by pixel. The fewer invaders remain, the faster they march. Pick a skill level from 1 to 7 on the title screen before you start.
Make the top 10 and you get to sign the hall of fame below. Back in 1979, Space Invaders Part II was the first video game ever to let players register their name with a high score. Three letters was all you got. Here you get 25, so make them count.
Hall Of Fame
- 1STLOADING SCORES........WAVE ..
Why This Game Is Here
In 1982 I was four years old. On weekends my father brought his IBM PC home from work, and on one of those big 5.25 inch floppy disks was a Space Invaders game. The monitor was an IBM 5151, the green phosphor screen that shipped with the first IBM PC. Its P39 phosphor had a long afterglow, so every invader dragged a faint trail of light behind it as it marched. To me it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I never forgot it.
This recreation is my tribute to that memory. The first commercial Space Invaders clone for the IBM PC was Space Strike, written in 8086 assembly by Michael Abrash and published by Datamost in 1982. It ran in CGA, had seven skill levels and awarded an extra life every 1000 points. Abrash later worked on Quake and wrote some of the most influential books on PC graphics programming, but it all started with those invaders.
I kept the classic mechanics intact: eleven columns of invaders, crumbling bunkers, the mystery saucer, the four-note march that speeds up as the field empties, and a single sound channel that cuts itself off, the way a real PC speaker did. The only liberty I took is the colour. Instead of P39 green, the screen glows in the cyan of this website. The afterglow is still there.
More Free Tools
Done saving Earth? Have a look at the rest of the toolbox: the Lloyd's Lasers VST3 plugin, the More Lasers laser and zap generator, the online TR-808 drum machine and Lloyd's Online Commodore 64.