Stop and think about this one for a little while.
Space Invaders is just a game, but it has to be one of the largest symbols of hopelessness I've ever come across. In most video games you overcome the great evil and defeat it, everybody's happy in the end and such on and so forth. In short, you save the world. Thats the point, you're supposed to go through trials and much difficulty, and in the end you are left with a feeling of accomplishment - that is what makes video games entertaining. Not so in Space Invaders.
Space Invaders is different. You shoot all of the weird flying jellyfish that feel that the best manoeuver they can make is to march on your little green vehicle at the bottom of the screen in a stepwise, geometric pattern downwards.
You can line the aliens up in your sights and shoot them all, you can even blast that red mothership at the top of the screen and get four question marks worth of bonus points, but you can never really defeat them.
You widdle them down, and you take refuge behind your sheilds, and then, once you think victory is at hand, you shoot the last alien out of the sky and there suddenly appears, as if out of nowhere, a new hoard of invaders. Only this time, they started just a little closer to the surface of Earth. You work feverently to destroy this wave of aliens as well, and if you do, it buys enough time to get an extra vehicle to defend Earth with. But this is just a kind of false hope. Every wave you destroy, there's one new vehicle for you, but there are hoards of aliens, and each time you defeate them they get a little bit closer to the ground.
The premise behind the game is that it's supposed to get more difficult with each subsiquent wave, so each one starts cloaser to the ground, is a bit faster than the last and returns more fire. The way the game is programed, however, dictates that if you should continue to quickly defeat the aliens, another wave will always follow - Literally, there is no end to the invasion.
The fight you put on, pushing the joystick back and forth and desperately mashing the fire button after you miss that last alien in hopes that you will somehow coax another shot out of your guns before your first one reaches the top of the screen, it's all in vain. It's like trying to read Hemmingway with only your teeth. You can't do; in Space Invaders, you cannot save Earth. It's hopeless.
But it doesn't end there! Through the years other games have been developed, including one called Galactic Battle, that are the same premise as Space Invaders. In this game, you go into space to fight pieces of pie, helecopters, and blinking blue rectangles, fighting a vigilant battle to save the earth from being taken over by flying television screens (You could argue this has already happened).
You are given the illusion of winning the battle - halfway through a stage, after six waves of aliens you get to refuel your ship and if you have enough points, you can spend them on an upgrade to your fighter-craft. More powerful guns, better speed, sheilds to protect you from the little white line that the pulsating orb fires at you.
And at the end of the stage, after you destroy the mothership, you again refuel. You can fly through five or so of these stages and never find the same alien to battle twice, but as soon as you get to the sixth, you are once again met with the ominus blue alien space helicopters - Only this time, they've come prepared. If you didn't upgrade your ship's guns yet, these craft take two shots to destroy. And so on for the rest of infinity. Eventually, you lose all of your space fighters and the aliens invariably take over Earth.
There is no excape, no hope. Space Invaders is a tragic symbol of inevitable defeat.
Yes, I know it's just a game.
