Space Fever

Space Fever
Developer	Nintendo R&D1
Publisher	Nintendo
System	Arcade
Release Date	Arcade JP 1980 US 1980

Space Fever (スペース・フィーバー) is a 1979 arcade game designed by Nintendo, developed by Ikegami Tsushinki and published by Nintendo. It was released in both color and monochrome versions. Its gameplay and appearance are very similar to that of Taito's 1978 Space Invaders.

Gameplay

Space Fever is Nintendo's version of Taito's popular Space Invaders. Space Fever stars alien invaders who are attacking Earth. Player must shoot them out of the sky before they land, while avoiding each projectile shot by them. The alien craft are arranged in rows and they slowly move left and right across the screen. When the row reaches the edge, the ships drop down a row and move in the opposite direction. As you shoot more enemies, the speed of them will increase, as will the number of their projectiles. You have four shelter blocks above you that absorb the enemy shots until they are worn through, and being hit by an enemy shot will cost you a life. You have three lifes and once you lose all of them, the game is over. Sometimes a UFO will fly along the top of the screen and can be hit for a random amount of Bonus points.

There are three different game modes for 1- or 2-player games:

• Game-A: There are two "blocks" of aliens that move in opposite directions to each other.
• Game-B: The aliens move as one "block", but they only appear one row at a time.
• Game-C: Equal to Space Invaders - all the aliens move as one "block" in the same direction.

Legacy

Sequels

A special version of Space Fever called SF-Hisplitter, released the same year, features aliens double the width of the standard variety, which can either be destroyed completely or split into two smaller aliens depending on where they are shot. Not only the color version was colored, but also got the looks of its shelter blocks modified from the looks of the monochrome version's.

A sequel to Space Fever, known as Space Fever II was built into the Game Boy Camera and acted both as a means of selecting the other built-in games, and as a game in itself. Space Fever II deviates from the Space Invaders formula, featuring instead smaller waves of individual aliens and bosses based on faces of Nintendo staff as well as the "game face" photos taken by the player, things in reality, or just drawings..