Ever wondered what Space Invaders would like if you tried to play it outside, in the real world? The folks at Rooster Teeth did too, so they created a life-size physical adaptation of the Space Invaders board, just to see what it would be like to turn the video game in a plain, old game.
While the game still ultimate boils down to person with a gun strafing and shooting at other people moving in formation in an ever-quickening side-to-side pattern, Rooster Teeth’s version of the game is a little more elaborate (read: awesome) than you would do with your friends. The “player” is actually two people. One person is pushing and pulling a cart on rails, while the other fires a large Nerf (or Nerf-style) rifle. The enemies approach, as you’d expect, by walking from side to side in formation, throwing water balloons at the cart when they get in range.
Based on the experience, there seemed to be a lot of real-world challenges that digital Earth defenders never had to deal with. The aliens, for example, were way smarter this time around. While the players did have some cardboard blocks for cover, but they weren’t quite as effective since the alien team was smart enough to wait until their target was exposed.
Though they hammed it up quite a bit, it seemed like both the player side really did have trouble coping with the pressure of having a much larger group of opponents coming at them. Unlike the original, this version of Space Invaders has reloading, which takes extra time, and seemed to get tougher with their increasingly wet hands and equipment. It also didn’t help that the gun would jam at the worst possible times. Maybe they should have stuck to water balloons?
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?