Spectron (ColecoVision)

Spectron is a Space Invaders clone, and there’s no real reason to beat around the bush when it comes to classifying it as such. Most of its gameplay and elements are lifted directly from their inspiration, but when one looks at a clone game, the question one should ask is what it does differently from the game it’s copying. In the case of Spectron, the main thing that sets it apart from Space Invaders might have to be how desperately the game wants you to die.

 

Funnily enough, this ties well into the story found in the manual. A cluster of planets known as Shalix has had their connection to their sun cut off by an intergalactic dust cloud leading to a famine they can’t recover from. Taking to space to ensure their survival, they search for planets they can colonize, the world of Spectra drawing their attention. Despite their plight almost being sympathetic, the player instead takes on the role of Spectra’s army, using Spectron Fighters to repel the invaders which is at least justified in that the Shalix fighters are trying to wipe out the local life so they can supplant it. This set-up doesn’t actually appear in the game itself, but it could conceivably explain why your enemies are so ruthless, although what it most likely comes from is just poor balancing in general.

For someone who has played Space Invaders, many of the core elements will be familiar. At the bottom of the screen you have your Spectron, the little fighter actually being able to move up, down, left, or right within a yellow rectangle that is long horizontally but rather squat. Up above, each level begins with a few rows of aliens appearing, these coming in two main types. The first and most common type are called Hobbits, which have no relation to any furry-footed fantasy creatures you might be thinking of. These little aliens float back and forth in a small area and fire down at you from time to time. However, every now and then a Hobbit turns into a Sinker, diving down towards you to try and either eliminate you by invading your box or planting a bomb in your base. There are also mothership enemies that will zoom across the top of the screen and give you more points than a typical enemy if you can shoot them down, your score being your main goal and a way to earn extra lives. Play will end when you run out of Spectron fighters or when Sinkers have placed enough bombs in the rectangle to detonate your base.

 

The enemies converting into Sinkers and your foes having another way of taking you down with the bombs is pretty much the main difference between Spectron and Space Invaders, but there are too many other factors that the developers messed up to make this small twist on the design an interesting one. The first problem is with the movement of the Hobbits. Hobbits will not move down, instead choosing to hover in the same row until they potentially turn into Sinkers. While there are other Hobbits in a row though, they won’t be able to fly all the way to the left or right, the entire row limited in movement until it has been thinned down to a very small group. This is mainly a concern because just like in Space Invaders, you do have two long segmented shields to protect you from enemy fire at first, but these get chewed through so quickly because you have no way of shooting at the Hobbits above them until the shields are destroyed. You can’t shoot up through them so you can’t try to pick them off early to preserve some of your shields, so even though your shields do get refreshed every few rounds, you’ll likely only have the smallest specks of your shield remaining by the time the first wave is completed.

Without your shields, Hobbits will fire down pretty often, making dodging effectively rather difficult. While Sinkers won’t appear in the first round, when they do start coming down, they will also make it harder to dodge well, the Sinkers drifting through the yellow rectangle until they’ve planted their bomb or they’ve been shot down. The rectangle is two Spectron fighters tall so you can sometimes take care of them before they’ve landed, but it’s not too surprising to see lasers come down in a constant sweeping hail that forces you to move in one direction to avoid dying. This gives any incoming Sinkers a great opportunity to fly in and plant their bombs, and while they do need to plant 10 bombs for that game over condition, the Sinkers come in greater numbers as the game progresses, crowding your rectangle further while you still have to dodge lasers from above. At least the game will allow you to let some Sinkers get by if you absolutely can’t deal with them, but it’s still surprising how quickly these bombs can become a concern when you start having multiple Sinkers heading towards the base at once. Sinkers can also fire down at you while they flying towards the base, meaning you might not even have a good window for shooting them down before they reach your rectangle and become even greater dangers, although their lasers at least won’t fire when they’re in the base.

 

Survival in Spectron is made incredibly difficult since enemies don’t really pull their punches and your defensive options are poor, but you might be inclined to think the game’s different skill options might be your savior. There are eight modes featured here, although they are essentially four difficulty modes that also have two-player options. Skill levels 1 and 2 are only really easier in that you get an extra life and shield refresh after a few rounds, but the major differences are there are six unique arrangements in skill levels 1 and 3 and eight featured in skill levels 2 and 4. These arrangement just mean the minor differences between how the Hobbits are arranged when a round starts, their colors sometimes being different but the layout not really meaningful enough to make the rounds feel different. The increased presence of Sinkers is the main concern as you continue to play levels, with none of the modes really feeling easy. Even if you are firing as fast as you can and trying to move intelligently, there is just too much going on when Spectron gets going to really let you get into a groove and earn a high score worthy of being proud of. Whatever your points end up being, it got that high because the game was failing to kill you rather than you succeeded at overcoming it.

THE VERDICT: Spectron wants you dead, and it won’t wait long to try and end your run. Your defensive shields will be decimated in the first round, allowing the game to quickly get oppressive with its laser fire and enemies who will dive down to enter your fighter’s base. While the failure condition of preventing enemies from laying bombs in your base could be seen as a way of limiting the player from getting too far on just surviving the alien waves up above, the aliens are so ruthlessly effective with both attack approaches that it’s hard to get a decent length run going. While its high difficulty sets it apart from its clear inspiration Space Invaders, it achieves it difficulty mostly through sloppily making everything too powerful to deal with consistently, making sessions of Spectron more annoying and luck-based than legitimately challenging.

 

And so, I give Spectron for ColecoVision…

A TERRIBLE rating. The borrowed elements from Space Invaders are too blatant to ignore, but this clone’s changes to the original game’s formula only made it worse. The game in general is just far too hostile, your defensive option ruined because the Hobbits above it can’t even be dealt with until they’ve essentially eliminated the shields entirely. The Sinkers are far too effective as well, the game getting more and more eager to send them down at you without thinking about the space needed to deal with them. It’s not too unexpected that a game about getting high scores will crank up the difficulty at some point to try and make the higher scores more prestigious, but Spectron comes out the gate with too much aggressive design. When you do have some luck and get a bit far it can be mildly entertaining, but knowing your progress will likely end when a Sinker flies down and fires too often to be dealt with in time, it’s hard to value that high score when it doesn’t feel earned so much as stumbled into.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no official Space Invaders game released for the ColecoVision, so Spectron was likely developed to give owners of the system something similar to play. Unfortunately, the need to change design elements to become something distinct only lead to a game that ends up hard to get into. An unrewarding score challenge makes pushing through the random aggression you’ll face not worth the trouble, making this a game that even huge Space Invaders fans looking for any twist on their favorite game’s design will want to avoid.