MAMEmania: Akkanvader

In this series retro game expert Zac Bentz picks his top ten MAME games. If you’re a casual gaming fanboy MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and is a software emulator that allows you to play ancient arcade games on modern hardware.

Akkanvader – 1995 – Taito

It’s no surprise that there are exactly 1,035,648,399 different clones of the original Space Invaders. Today, I’m taking a look at one of them, Taito’s Akkanvader from 1995. It’s colorful, cute, and best of all, fun!

There are a wide range of characters to pick from (shown above). Each character flies in a different ship, from the standard Invaders craft, to a dog in a trash can, to, well, a flying poo. Yep, those are poops on the right hand side. The character you choose has no bearing on the game, as each craft behaves in exactly the same way. Ultimately it just comes down to whether or not your want to be a flying space hero, dog, or pile of shit.

There are five main worlds, with several sub-stages in each main world. Each stage is practically vomiting colors out of the screen, from the colorful alien enemies, colorful backgrounds and colorful explosions and effects. Everything about Akkanvader is colorful as well as playfully animated, often making it quite difficult to tell just what the hell is going on.

While the opening b&w retro blast (right down to the awesome retro sounds!) is all well and good, these days we expect a little something more from our casual entertainment. You’ll only get a few seconds to blast the cute little retro buggers before they quickly switch over to slightly more 3D and much more colorful little sprites with cute faces. The aliens soon start to take on less traditional forms, like the large blobby guys that break up into smaller guys as you blast away at them. There are even end stage bosses, something missing from the original game.

There are plenty of off-beat baddies to blast to bits, like chickens, fish, octopi and ghosts. Some of them march left and right, some up and down, some in circles or in pyramid formation. There are also “bonus stages” where a few lines of aliens will shoot across the screen for your sharp-shooting pleasure.

The final totally boss is a totally awesome giant Invader! He sends out equally giant spongy eye beams that you can deflect with a few shots, and a speedy zig-zag beam from his mouth. He also has a couple flailing arms and an array of beams that appear out of his body. He gradually walks toward the bottom of the screen before unleashing a barrage of attacks and moving back to the top.

Akkanvader is a really fun, really mindless shooter. It’s covered in frosting and candy sprinkles and will have you coming back for more, just like its great grandfather did way back when.

Zac Bentz is a regular contributor to the Japanese culture blog Japanator, runs his own Japanese music review blog ZB’s A-Z of J-Music and plays crazy electro-rock in The Surfactants. He lives in Duluth, MN with his wife, pets and a closet full of adventure.