Wow. The level of programming voodoo carried out here reminds me of the efforts put into the 3D Classics on 3DS, or even the Space Harrier/Sonic re-releases on the same console. This is super-geeky to talk about, but *wow*. What an amazing feat.
I have this game a few times over, the GB cart with the special Space Invaders SNES port built in, the SNES version, the Saturn version (which is basically nothing more than the arcade game on the disc), the Taito Legends PS2 and PC versions, the versions on Taito Memories on PS2 (the compilations contain all the variants of the game, plus the sequels), the PSP Taito Legends Pocket. All I'd need is the PCE CD port, and the PS2 Space Invaders Anniversary. One can never have too many versions of Space Invaders.
I, uh, may have been one of those people who got Space Invaders and Frogger (and those Williams and Atari collections) at the end of the SNES's run. I've since grabbed Mr. Do and Arkanoid, because apparently these days my favorite thing to do on a 16-bit console is play games that were ancient even then. I did also get that 1994 Game Boy Space Invaders cart, which makes my decision to get Space Invaders standalone even stranger in retrospect.
For me it would be the game boy arcade ports. That be my foray. Spent countless hours playing donkey Kong 94, space invaders 94, Froger, the best of Microsoft entertainment pack, and the galaaga/galaxian port on gameboy. must have been like 4-7 when I got those games, and I guess made me slightly bias towards old school arcade games since I was little I suppose.
This is one of my favorite ports of Space Invaders. It would've been amazing if there were more Game Boy cartridges that had SGB enhancements containing Super Nintendo codes. Another feature you forgot to point out is that if you play the Game Boy version (not the SNES version) on SGB, pause the game and hold the A button to change the default upright arcade cabinet border to the hidden arcade cocktail cabinet border.
Jeremy Parish, I loved your quick montage of the shooter genre progression abruptly cutting back to the game under investigation. Great video as always, but I particularly admired that touch.
THANK YOU for mentioning Space Invaders on the SNES. I remembered playing a two-player versus 2D shooter at a Toys 'R Us at some point in the 90s but had no idea what it was until this review. I'd long since considered the memory a Mandela Effect but your reference to it and a quick Google search shows it indeed existed. I appreciate your efforts at delving into Nintendo game consoles' history.
Great video, thanks for making these. :) That's awesome that Taito put SNES rom on a Game Boy cart. I did not know that something like that was possible, really cool.
I have watched every single episode of this series over the past 2 evenings. This is one of the best Game Boy series' on TH-cam and I'll definitely be picking up the book soon. Good luck with the rest of the Game Boy's library; I'm really looking forward to more episodes!
One thing the SNES cartridge version has over the Super Game Boy version is a 2-player versus mode. It's actually kinda neat. There are special invaders that can negatively affect your opponent's screen. Sorta like Puyo Puyo.
Ah yes. I remember getting Space Invaders '94 and thinking that this was something amazing, to have a Super Nintendo game playable from a Gameboy cartridge. And then the novelty wore off pretty quickly once I remembered that it was 1994 and more impressive things were going on in gaming. In spite of the coolness and wow factor of getting a Super Nintendo game playable from a Gameboy cart (which we would never see again), I felt that it was still nowhere near as special as Kirby's Dreamland 2 or Donkey Kong '94 when it came to doing cool things with the Super Gameboy. [Edit: Silly me. I wrote the following paragraph before finishing the video. I should have known better.] I know that you're a long way from covering the Super Gameboy in any sort of depth, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite multi-part article about the Super Gameboy, appropriately titled "F*** The Super Gameboy". I'm sure you'll know what letters replace the asterisks when performing a Google search. It is probably the best write-up on the internet concerning the peripheral.
@13:39 "Portable games that did their best, which could then be plugged into a console for a better, higher-fidelity experience." The Nintendo NX is just around the corner. A portable console that can be plugged into a home-console dock. Hmm. HMM.
Top tip: The region locking only applies to PAL/NTSC, so the USA cartridge can be played on a Japanese Super Game Boy 2. That way, you get the GB game playing at the correct clock speed and the cool SNES game that they added for the 1994 version. It also works on the original SFC Super Game Boy. Big thanks to SNES hacker Svambo for this info. I didn't expect it to work this easily 🙂
"Feels slightly ashamed that he sold this game for the GBC version of Space Invaders..." Hehe...so wow! I had no idea the depth that the Super Gameboy features went to! That is some pretty impressive technical wizardry on Nintendo and Taito's part. Alas...I have neither a SNES nor a Super Game Boy, so this port, while well meaning, just felt so....bare. There isn't much to it, so I found the GBC version (by Taito and Activision) and swapped my copy of Space Invaders '94 for Space Invaders '99 (which I would argue...is a pretty great remake of the original Space Invaders) Sure maybe not nearly as technical as this version, but an enjoyable romp none the less.
Loved the episode! Now I cant wait for you talk about the other cool stuff that Super Gameboy could do, like Killer Instinct's 2 player mode. Keep it up :)
This is indeed a very interesting little game. Given how simple Space Invaders is, I'm not surprised this was one of the only Super GB games to have an SNES mode. Since arbitrary code execution is possible -- and easy! -- in the Pokemon games, I'm surprised there aren't more demos where people break into that SNES mode with the Super GB as with the snake and pong games that TASVideo built through Super Mario World. Like as nice as "Metroid II but with an SNES mode where you can tell where the hell you are at any time" would be, you have to create basically two different versions of the game, and GB cartridges (and the memory used to store stuff like that) is limited. You could argue that 'but it's like two games in one!' would be a great selling point, but that goes so counter to GB's founding concepts of affordability and simplicity that helped it catch on in the first place.
***** Yeah, this particular version worked because Taito basically just combined an existing Game Boy ROM and an existing Super NES ROM - they didn't go out of the way to build an all-new Super NES experience. Would have been pretty rad to have a Super Mario Land anthology that featured a ROM of Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World in it, though!
Jeremy Parish I was looking up whether or not this would be feasible with, say, a custom-made GB cartridge or a flash cart -- I'd love to be able to use a GB cart to play my SNES games with just because it cuts down on the number of flash carts I'd have to buy to play everything -- and I think the main reason is the limitations on the SNES itself -- the game would need to run in main memory, and that isn't a lot of space. There's still definitely interesting potential to explore in that sort of hacking. SNES ram is like 128K or so IIRC (not as well-acquainted with the SNES specs at this level tbh). Easily enough for a simple Space Invaders game, maybe not enough for stuff that much more complex. But I can have my dreams of SGB-based SNES Pac Man...
I have a lcd game version of space invaders with "scrolling" (similar to how VVVVVV does it, can't think of a better example) and it is indeed stupid and game breaking.
Hmm....well 1990s would be 20 years removed from the 1970s when most of these arcade hits first took off. Add the fact games culture tended to advance quicker back then and I imagine you had your first wave of video game centric nostalgia hence the late stage SNES arcade port blitz.
infernogott You wouldn't be able to play the SNES game because GBA and GameCube Player don't work like Super Game Boy. You'd just see the standard Game Boy game, which you could tweak with alternate palettes, but that's it.
As cool as space invaders (I played it a lot as a kid) I always enjoyed Missile Command a lot more. I think Atari one upped Taito with that game and it’s not often I say that about American developers who attempted to recapture the magic of a Japanese game.
![Game Boy World #055: Lock ’N Chase [Data East, 1990]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dZzb-W6xi24/mqdefault.jpg)
![Game Boy World #055: Lock ’N Chase [Data East, 1990]](/img/tr.png)
![Game Boy World #053: Mercenary Force [Live Planning/Lenar/Meldac, 1990]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3QkjI4uP2bY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Game Boy World #042: Serpent [Dual/Naxat/Taxan, 1990]](/img/n.gif)
I thought "Why is the Space Invaders episode 16 minutes long?" Apparently it's because this version of Space Invaders was incredible.
I’ll never assume again a review will be boring just because I thought the game itself would be boring.
For real. _“Sixteen minutes?_ for _Space invaders?_ ...oh, hey. Huh.”
Really appreciate the effort that went into this mini-documentary. One of the best, if not the best dissections of a GameBoy title.
I swooned when you showed the Space Invaders->Galaxian->Galaga->Xevious->Dodonpachi progression
“Thanks for joining us, hope you like puzzle games!”
I couldn’t sum up Game Boy Works better myself
Wow. The level of programming voodoo carried out here reminds me of the efforts put into the 3D Classics on 3DS, or even the Space Harrier/Sonic re-releases on the same console. This is super-geeky to talk about, but *wow*. What an amazing feat.
i've been searching for content like this forever, but it's harder to find because of less views apparently. these videos are criminally good
This made me reconsider Space Invaders again. I like the idea of the challenge of only having one shot on screen at a time.
I have this game a few times over, the GB cart with the special Space Invaders SNES port built in, the SNES version, the Saturn version (which is basically nothing more than the arcade game on the disc), the Taito Legends PS2 and PC versions, the versions on Taito Memories on PS2 (the compilations contain all the variants of the game, plus the sequels), the PSP Taito Legends Pocket. All I'd need is the PCE CD port, and the PS2 Space Invaders Anniversary. One can never have too many versions of Space Invaders.
Absolutely love the attention detail as always, including the screen resolution of the original arcade cabinet.
A truly impressive feat that, as you mentioned, sadly went largely unrecognized. I'm glad I finally picked this one up a few weeks back.
Your best yet, Jeremy. Had no idea about the history here.
I, uh, may have been one of those people who got Space Invaders and Frogger (and those Williams and Atari collections) at the end of the SNES's run. I've since grabbed Mr. Do and Arkanoid, because apparently these days my favorite thing to do on a 16-bit console is play games that were ancient even then.
I did also get that 1994 Game Boy Space Invaders cart, which makes my decision to get Space Invaders standalone even stranger in retrospect.
For me it would be the game boy arcade ports. That be my foray. Spent countless hours playing donkey Kong 94, space invaders 94, Froger, the best of Microsoft entertainment pack, and the galaaga/galaxian port on gameboy.
must have been like 4-7 when I got those games, and I guess made me slightly bias towards old school arcade games since I was little I suppose.
What Taito did for this humble little port is nothing short of a miracle.
This is one of my favorite ports of Space Invaders. It would've been amazing if there were more Game Boy cartridges that had SGB enhancements containing Super Nintendo codes. Another feature you forgot to point out is that if you play the Game Boy version (not the SNES version) on SGB, pause the game and hold the A button to change the default upright arcade cabinet border to the hidden arcade cocktail cabinet border.
Jeremy Parish, I loved your quick montage of the shooter genre progression abruptly cutting back to the game under investigation. Great video as always, but I particularly admired that touch.
I play space invaders on the game boy when I was a kid and I still like it a lot. 😀👍🎮
I wasn't sure how you could talk about Space Invaders for 16 minutes and keep it interesting but you somehow pulled it off. Bravo!
THANK YOU for mentioning Space Invaders on the SNES. I remembered playing a two-player versus 2D shooter at a Toys 'R Us at some point in the 90s but had no idea what it was until this review. I'd long since considered the memory a Mandela Effect but your reference to it and a quick Google search shows it indeed existed. I appreciate your efforts at delving into Nintendo game consoles' history.
Oh man. This was my favourite Game Boy World yet!
Wow. I had no idea the Super Game Boy could run SFC/SNES code.
Great video, thanks for making these. :)
That's awesome that Taito put SNES rom on a Game Boy cart. I did not know that something like that was possible, really cool.
The concept of a portable game that you can play enhanced on your tv kinda reminds me of the switch
Hey, you didn't mention Heyankio Alien!
I have watched every single episode of this series over the past 2 evenings. This is one of the best Game Boy series' on TH-cam and I'll definitely be picking up the book soon. Good luck with the rest of the Game Boy's library; I'm really looking forward to more episodes!
A very cool piece of software. I had no idea you could do something like that.
One thing the SNES cartridge version has over the Super Game Boy version is a 2-player versus mode. It's actually kinda neat. There are special invaders that can negatively affect your opponent's screen. Sorta like Puyo Puyo.
My favorite old school arcade game !
Lovely game
Ah yes. I remember getting Space Invaders '94 and thinking that this was something amazing, to have a Super Nintendo game playable from a Gameboy cartridge. And then the novelty wore off pretty quickly once I remembered that it was 1994 and more impressive things were going on in gaming.
In spite of the coolness and wow factor of getting a Super Nintendo game playable from a Gameboy cart (which we would never see again), I felt that it was still nowhere near as special as Kirby's Dreamland 2 or Donkey Kong '94 when it came to doing cool things with the Super Gameboy.
[Edit: Silly me. I wrote the following paragraph before finishing the video. I should have known better.]
I know that you're a long way from covering the Super Gameboy in any sort of depth, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite multi-part article about the Super Gameboy, appropriately titled "F*** The Super Gameboy". I'm sure you'll know what letters replace the asterisks when performing a Google search. It is probably the best write-up on the internet concerning the peripheral.
Neil Purcell I referenced Christine's SGB series in the video!
Jeremy Parish Yeah, I saw that. That'll teach me not to write responses before finishing the video.
@13:39 "Portable games that did their best, which could then be plugged into a console for a better, higher-fidelity experience."
The Nintendo NX is just around the corner. A portable console that can be plugged into a home-console dock. Hmm. HMM.
Thought exactly the same ^^.
Indeed! Seems like Nintendo have been trying the Switch idea ever since the Super Game Boy!
"Space Invaders are now invading your Super Nintendo"
That is so cute and cool
Top tip: The region locking only applies to PAL/NTSC, so the USA cartridge can be played on a Japanese Super Game Boy 2. That way, you get the GB game playing at the correct clock speed and the cool SNES game that they added for the 1994 version. It also works on the original SFC Super Game Boy.
Big thanks to SNES hacker Svambo for this info. I didn't expect it to work this easily 🙂
I'm adding Space Invaders to my wishlist. Thank you!
Amazing job. Loving all seies your are making. Thank you
I always thought my version of Space invaders (1990) looked a bit different than the ones I saw on youtube.
I have the SNES and GB SGB Space Invaders versions.
"Feels slightly ashamed that he sold this game for the GBC version of Space Invaders..." Hehe...so wow! I had no idea the depth that the Super Gameboy features went to! That is some pretty impressive technical wizardry on Nintendo and Taito's part. Alas...I have neither a SNES nor a Super Game Boy, so this port, while well meaning, just felt so....bare. There isn't much to it, so I found the GBC version (by Taito and Activision) and swapped my copy of Space Invaders '94 for Space Invaders '99 (which I would argue...is a pretty great remake of the original Space Invaders) Sure maybe not nearly as technical as this version, but an enjoyable romp none the less.
Loved the episode! Now I cant wait for you talk about the other cool stuff that Super Gameboy could do, like Killer Instinct's 2 player mode. Keep it up :)
Great video, looking forward to more SGB love with King of Fighters, Donkey Kong etc
This is indeed a very interesting little game. Given how simple Space Invaders is, I'm not surprised this was one of the only Super GB games to have an SNES mode.
Since arbitrary code execution is possible -- and easy! -- in the Pokemon games, I'm surprised there aren't more demos where people break into that SNES mode with the Super GB as with the snake and pong games that TASVideo built through Super Mario World.
Like as nice as "Metroid II but with an SNES mode where you can tell where the hell you are at any time" would be, you have to create basically two different versions of the game, and GB cartridges (and the memory used to store stuff like that) is limited. You could argue that 'but it's like two games in one!' would be a great selling point, but that goes so counter to GB's founding concepts of affordability and simplicity that helped it catch on in the first place.
***** Yeah, this particular version worked because Taito basically just combined an existing Game Boy ROM and an existing Super NES ROM - they didn't go out of the way to build an all-new Super NES experience.
Would have been pretty rad to have a Super Mario Land anthology that featured a ROM of Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World in it, though!
Jeremy Parish I was looking up whether or not this would be feasible with, say, a custom-made GB cartridge or a flash cart -- I'd love to be able to use a GB cart to play my SNES games with just because it cuts down on the number of flash carts I'd have to buy to play everything -- and I think the main reason is the limitations on the SNES itself -- the game would need to run in main memory, and that isn't a lot of space. There's still definitely interesting potential to explore in that sort of hacking.
SNES ram is like 128K or so IIRC (not as well-acquainted with the SNES specs at this level tbh). Easily enough for a simple Space Invaders game, maybe not enough for stuff that much more complex. But I can have my dreams of SGB-based SNES Pac Man...
the_muteKi Maybe it's possible to run Snes roms via Everdriev GB.
I had no idea Space Invaders was on GB. Off to eBay!
Does this mean you could use the ACE glitch in Pokemon Red and Blue to make Super Mario World?
I have a lcd game version of space invaders with "scrolling" (similar to how VVVVVV does it, can't think of a better example) and it is indeed stupid and game breaking.
Hmm....well 1990s would be 20 years removed from the 1970s when most of these arcade hits first took off. Add the fact games culture tended to advance quicker back then and I imagine you had your first wave of video game centric nostalgia hence the late stage SNES arcade port blitz.
Does this game boy title save high scores?
The 1990 game definitely does not
So what happens when you put the US or EU Version in a GBA or Gamecube? Can you still play the SNES version or at least the color modes?
infernogott You wouldn't be able to play the SNES game because GBA and GameCube Player don't work like Super Game Boy. You'd just see the standard Game Boy game, which you could tweak with alternate palettes, but that's it.
Game Boy Player is an everlasting letdown.
Heh, I actually have the SNES version of the game
Wait only us release have a embedded unlock?
To my knowledge, yes.
@@JeremyParish oh god, then i have to buy the separated sfc game then
As cool as space invaders (I played it a lot as a kid) I always enjoyed Missile Command a lot more. I think Atari one upped Taito with that game and it’s not often I say that about American developers who attempted to recapture the magic of a Japanese game.
Hostile alien invaders from space. 😀👾