Dad claims he finished Space Invaders

[ryantheleach]

I've been trying to research this as its been bugging me, dad claims he's finished space invaders as he has kept a cocktail space invaders cabinet because he finished it.

he used to own a pizza bar and had a few arcade machines, but has sold them or they have moved on before I was even born, now all he has is the cocktail cabinet.

anyways I've been doing research and it appears to me that space invaders barely  even has enough hardware to run let alone have a ending animation of fireworks like he described.

I think he may be getting confused with another game maybe, he mentioned that at one point in the game that he had to shoot the invaders from top to bottom as the bottom row was invulnerable...

any ideas?

[MaximRecoil]

I doubt the game has an ending. You might try asking on the Twin Galaxies forums in the Coin-Op Video Games section.

Surprisingly, for such a classic game, the top score on Twin Galaxies doesn't seem to be all that high; 55,160 set by Donald Hayes (probably the best all-around classic arcade game player ever). Ask your father if he remembers about what his score was when he allegedly finished Space Invaders. Also, ask him to do it again, and videotape it.

I doubt he'd be confused about what game he was playing if he actually kept the machine.

There is always the chance that he's just pulling your leg too.

[Avinitlarge]

I cant see it having an ending too. One of my mates recons he completed pacman. Dont know how true it is, I thought it was a never ending game.

[SirPeale]

Pac-Man has an end - level 256.

[CrazyKongFan]

Pac-man has a pseudo-ending...it's actually a kill screen, you can't finish it. The screen counter rolls over to 0 (255 is the highest an 8-bit number can represent. After that it rolls over to 0). The game starts drawing fruit in the wrong place due to this, and it ends up screwing up the right half of the board, filling it with garbage. Because of this, you can't eat enough dots to finish the board.  There's also 9 dots in the garbage area that can be eaten, and respawn everytime you die. Here's a MAME screengrab (using the cheat function to set it to level 256)

[Ummon]

Yeah, none o those games had endings. It wasn't a concept in those days. Show him what Space Invaders looks like, he may not even remember that right.

[TOK]

There is an old game that has fireworks, but its not when you finish the game, its after every set of levels.

I'm thinking its Pleiads, but its very early AM so that memory may be as bad as your dads. 

[shilmover]

Tempest has "fireworks" when you get a high score.

[AndyWarne]

Maybe he meant the "Rainbow Bonus" for hitting one of the bottom row last

[shardian]

My dad was always telling total BS stories when I was a kid. He totally believed most of them.
Here are the highlights:
-He wrote Ike/Tina Turner's "Knock on Wood". Those rat ---daisies--- stoled it from him when he sang it at a camp fire one night. I looked it up - he must have been one heck of an 8 year old singer!!
-While he was in the Navy, Gene Simmons was also in, and served on the same boat. Looked it up...Gene Simmons was never in the Navy, and even if he was, it would have been before my dad served.

Ah man, my memory is failing me because I can't remember a few other doozies. I quit checking them after a while. And to think I used to brag to my friends about my dad's accomplishments...

Note to Dad's - tell TRUE stories. your kids will repeat your stories to other folks, and you better be able to produce the goods to defend your child's honor.

[CrazyKongFan]

Yeah, I used to work with a guy like that...loved to tell stories that you knew were BS

[RayB]

Note to Dad's - tell TRUE stories. your kids will repeat your stories to other folks, and you better be able to produce the goods to defend your child's honor.

Its not funny when your kid's going around bragging about your mediocre accomplishments.

[torez]

Yeah, I knew one girl like that.  She used to tell us that she can't sleep at night because of all the nightmares she had from serving in Israeli army.  Found out later she immigrated to US when she was almost 17.  Then she started crap about having blood cancer and she will die soon.  Next, that she was a private investigator, etc. etc.  She was about 21 and in college then. 
t

[Hoagie_one]

My dad told incredible stories that were true.  Mostly korean war stories that you hoped weren't true but knew were.

[Epyx]

Or just other childhood friends...we had a friend Jason who swore he made it to a stage in Xevious where he fought a mothership in a cave complex...we were amazed thinking he had gotten further than any of us...he was never able to reproduce this "feat" in front of us but we attributed it to him being in the "zone" for a lucky game...

He maintained this story into high school (85-90 for me...)...fast forward 1998 and Mame and the wonderful world of mame cheats...I played the game to see if this was true and lo and behold the game just adjust scrolled the same scenery over and over (this was before the game docs/info was up on the internet describing the scrolling..).

If I ever see him again...

[Ummon]

Or just other childhood friends...we had a friend Jason who swore he made it to a stage in Xevious where he fought a mothership in a cave complex...

I knew two kids on my street like this. Well, the second one told those kinds of stories when I happened to catch back up with him in high school.

The first kid, I remember him telling me there was this R-rated version of Xanadu that was more like a very weird, and dark, sci-fi scheme. (His dad had bootleg connections, and we saw all kinds of movies on beta before cable even came to town. Xanadu was one of them, and we were apeshit for it, the soundtrack, everything.) It was really cool his ability to imagine these things and in such detail.

The kid in high school would tell me stuff about partying and his girlfriend and her car that she'd let him drive, and how they'd.....you know.....and I loved all of it. I figured he was full of ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---, but the entertainment value was so worth it.

Even more so with the first kid, cos it was an instrumental component in developing my own imagination and vision.

[ryantheleach]

it was over 25 years ago that's why i say he may have troubles remembering, he said it was after 100 frames of space invaders and the last 10 or so they stop moving down and you had to kill them from top to bottom, he even said the strategy used to do it, since the invaders move 1 row at a time you either had to shoot in front of them and let them move into it, or shoot at the rear as they dodge out the way, and what he says makes sense...

and he still remembers what it would look like the cocktail is sitting in my room atm i used to sue it as a desk for homework for school.

he did it late one night after closing, between 12am and 4am after closing the pizza bar he had, thus no one was around.

[gnateye]

Yeah, I knew one girl like that.  She used to tell us that she can't sleep at night because of all the nightmares she had from serving in Israeli army.  Found out later she immigrated to US when she was almost 17.  Then she started crap about having blood cancer and she will die soon.  Next, that she was a private investigator, etc. etc.  She was about 21 and in college then. 
t

i knew a girl like this too! not the same stories but they kept escalating to the point she had to split cause people starting asking questions...

her biggest whopper was:

"her family got kicked out of colorado and can never return becuase they filled their whole house with snow to escape from the mob..."


how do you get expelled from a whole state and who handles that and makes sure you dont try to sneak back in?

crazy!! like coocoo!

[torez]

Gnateye, most likely they had couple of unpaid speeding tickets in that state, so after moving out they don't want to go there anymore 

[Ummon]

how do you get expelled from a whole state and who handles that and makes sure you dont try to sneak back in?

crazy!! like coocoo!

It's them damn Cana-....um, Colorodoan Mounties!

[ryantheleach]

Turns out he was talking about space invaders part 2 i showed him some screenshots of the rainbow bonus and thats the fireworks he remembers, now all i have to do is do a tool assisted run to see if theres an end, thanks andy!