https://www.4gamer.net/games/991/G999104/20250723063/
After I read the share about how they made it, I think they’re 100% deserve a single thread.
そのためには基板とアーケードアーカイブスを比較し，当時の開発者自身やスコアラーにチェックをしてもらう。「リッジレーサー」では全国1位の記録を持つハイスコアラーを招聘し，当時のテクニックが使えるかどうかといった細かな部分まで検証が行われている。こうした検証は，配信するすべてのタイトルで必ず行われるそうだ。
Honestly, I can’t see this being worth the price that they’re going to charge for it.
Space Invaders is one of the most ported and cloned games of all time and it’s so easy to play it already. This isn’t like Ridge Racer or The Outfoxies where it’s the first “real” release of the arcade port ever.
Yes, but I’m very curious about this line so I googled something.
the sound has been reproduced to the limit of how it sounded back then
Like I said at the start, the sound chip is pretty hard to emulate, and most people don’t bother. I’d like to do it, but I haven’t yet. So I just make my emulator play prerecorded sound effects at the right times. These sound effects can readily be downloaded online.
At least most of them can. There are 9 sound effects that can be found online easily, but the tenth sound effect is a bit more elusive – it plays when you gain a new life (by scoring either 1000 or 1500 points), and is presumably hard to record without an overlapping “alien death” sound effect. It can, however, be found in some MAME sound packs. The sound effect in question can be heard at 2:04 in this video.
Note also that some sound packs found online have seemingly swapped the file names of the “laser shot” sound and the “alien death” sound. They actually still fit somewhat when swapped, but look out for that if you want an authentic sound experience.
Compare with different versions of the sound in Space Invader. You can find they’re very different somehow and AA version is seems more closer to the original, especially the white noise.
I downloaded a common emulator sound file on the Internet. And when you noticed the sound, you will find that there’s something tiny difference, I guess it’s the recording distortion.
Space Invaders uses discrete circuits for most of its sound generation. So far, this has made it difficult to emulate those sounds efficiently and all the emulators I know use predigitized samples that are simply played back at the proper time.
I rewrote the original 8080 emulator that Jim had written, so that it uses XBYTE, which is very efficient and fast. The emulator can be studied to see how XBYTE can be used. It uses a 256-long jump+skip table and 224 instructions to realize the 8080 generic core emulation. It calls external hub routines for the 8080 IN and OUT instructions, which interface to real world. In this case, these IN and OUT routines read the pushbutton inputs and control sound output, as well as talk to a barrel shifter that was on the Space Invaders motherboard, which was used to speed up the ROM software.
The block diagram below shows the 76477 chip’s functional elements and can be compared to the die photo above. The voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) produced a tone whose frequency depends on the control voltage. The “super low frequency” SLF oscillator generated a triangle wave. Feeding this into the VCO generated a varying pitch, useful for bird chirps, sirens, or the warbling sound of the UFO in Space Invaders. The “one-shot” produced a pulse of a fixed length to control the length of the sound. The envelope generator made the sound more realistic by ramping its volume up at the start (attack) and down at the end (decay). The digital white noise generator was used for drums, gunshots, explosions and other similar sound effects. Finally the digital mixer combined these signals and fed them to the output amplifier.
I guess it’s like how much money you wanna paid the sound?
Sound is 50% of a game
You can also change every sound’s volume in the game like every board setup/quality/age different, all based on your memory (eg, some arcade machines fully muted the flying sound of UFO at that time).
I really disagree with the premise here, Space Invaders is fun, and as comprehensible as Super Mario Bros. Nes is, it’s just an arcade game. It does continue to have “modernized” popularity, it’s got worldwide variants in Round One, Dave & Busters, etc., basically every remaining arcade.
I don’t really get the argument beyond like the author stating “I don’t think it’s fun” and extrapolating it as “nowadays, we don’t think this is fun”. It’s still fun…I played a bunch at Musee Mechanique when I could stop by regularly its fun…the sound is good too.
I think Blue Shark is a useful key in understanding the appeal of Space Invaders. By its stats it seems to be the superior game to Space Invaders:
It might be enemies attacking you back that made the magic happen. Having to keep track of moving your ship away from bullets in the back of your mind while concentrating on what you’re shooting at is what triggers that switch in your brain that makes you think you are the car you’re driving.
Space Invaders is an arcade game and Blue Shark is an electronic shooting gallery. Space Invaders time to death may be short but playing well isn’t just higher score but more time, control, and influence over an intense situation. The invaders motion is regimented so it’s clear what is and isn’t in your control, improvement seems doable, the aliens don’t wildly move in random parabolas, etc. they’re on a specific, repeated, track in relation to you but still behave with some autonomy (which shoot, when, etc.) .
A shooting gallery’s score is extrinsic to a timed display, inaction is non-participative but not punished. Maybe you care if you see a high score, but those scores don’t really “mean anything” to the game. if you look at 1976 Death Race, it’s timed play and has a little score explainer on the cabinet, 1-3 kills is Skeleton Chaser, 4-6 is Bone Cracker, 21+ is Expert Driver, etc because the score is secondary to play (murder simulating).
Space Invaders, if you don’t do anything and lose, that itself is stressful, the bunkers start disintegrating, the sound gets louder, the game state is always shifting adversarially. It lends itself to exhibition, if you can’t see the screen but someone’s staying on the machine for a few screens, something different is happening.
It’s loud, it’s fast, it’s intense, it’s immediate, the goal, scoring and gameplay are clear. It’s good game!
I’m maybe not as interested in hanging around Blue Shark for 2 minutes after I play to see if the next person gets an extended blasting session, or peeking over someone’s shoulder on Death Race to see if I’m watching more of a Bone Cracker or a Gremlin Hunter.
Some live streaming playlists
just echoing that space invaders absolutely rules and 99.99% of all those numerous clones and ports are immediately and significantly inferior to the arcade version, and yeah like muaad said none of them do sound the way it ought to be done.
anything for a home console doesn’t do the tate screen orientation, so there are literally 0 good “contemporary” ports
(tho given the game’s release date “contemporary” would be atari 2600 and that version is alright actually for the time)
Pretty sure this one’s in the SNK 40th Anniversary collection
It’s not ! It was in the Japanese exclusive PSP collection "SNK Arcade Classics 0 " , but otherwise only there (or I guess stand alone as a “PSP mini” outside of japan?)
