I heard a report once (around 1980) that the Space Invaders world record had been beaten, it was reported as two and a half million. Does anyone know if this is correct, there seems to be too much of a random factor in the enemy firing to make this believable. Thanks.

Regards, Gaz.

-- LordGaz (garyjlee@hotmail.com), February 22, 2002

Answers

Highest proven MAME score is 41,260 by Franklin Cruz.

Highest score at Funspot was 48,480 by Perry Rodgers, set in the summer of 2000.

Guinness Record was by Sonny Shum, he scored 29,090.

Of course higher scores are possible, but I think the limit would be around 200K. Over 2 million is pure BS.

-- Mark Longridge (zero1@look.ca), February 22, 2002.

I think anything is possible on Space Invaders, sorry. :)

-- Joe Ledesma (JoeyL21988@yahoo.com), February 22, 2002.

Hmm.... when I was back in high-school in '80 I watched one of the guys I went to school with score 70k on Space Invaders Part 3.

However, I have yet to see the particular version of Space Invaders Part 3 that we had in the local arcade.

After completing the 1st stage it gave the opportunity for entering your name.

The stage number was included in the graphics of the protective bases.

Every 3rd stage the invaders didn't move and you had a time limit to shoot them all - with 1000 bonus points for getting them all within the time limit.

The "rainbow" bonus was worth 1000 points and consisted of the screen being "split in 2" vertically by a zig-zag line and then filled in an anti-clockwise spiral from the middle of the screen by what looked like stylised paw prints.

The motherships alternated between 300 point standard motherships, assuming you were counting your shots, and 500 point flashing motherships.

It was far-and-away the best version from a player perspective because it never got impossibly difficult and had the best bonuses for the "rainbow" bonus. It was also the only version I saw that had the 1000 point timed stages every 3rd stage.

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (mamester@i4free.co.nz), February 22, 2002.

I just played "Space War Part 3". It seems just as you describe beejay.

You can download the roms from here:

http://www.andywarne.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/techpage.htm

I could only get it to work in mame32 version 35, so of course it also works with mame35 dos version and the TG versions based on mame35.

Play the rom as invadpt2.

Mark

-- Mark Longridge (zero1@look.ca), February 23, 2002.

Looks like that web page is out of date.

Space War Part 3 is actually already supported in the recent versions of mame as "spacewr3".

-- Mark Longridge (zero1@look.ca), February 23, 2002.

According to KLOV the record (for non-stop play) is "38 hours and 37 minutes and an accumulation of 1,114,000 points (111 roll overs, averaging three rolls an hour)". http://www.klov.com/S/Space_Invaders.html

But what is the "Stratford Record"??

-- Graham Hawkins (horsie@ihug.co.nz), February 23, 2002.

I'd assume it was a name of a town/city, but I don't really know :)

-- Joe Ledesma (JoeyL21988@yahoo.com), February 23, 2002.

Space War III - hm.... I'll have to check that out sometime soon since that was the version of Space Invaders I most enjoyed playing as a "ahem"... youngster.....

BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (mamester@i4free.co.nz), February 27, 2002.

Last year I attended a Classic Video Game convention, in Philadelphia, PA. One of the events was the posthumous awarding of the world record for the highest score in Space Invaders. Unfortunately, I do not remember the guys name, or the exact score. I do know that the score was well in excess of 1 million, and I am fairly confident that it was over 2 million. I also seem to remember that the guy acheived the high score during a charity event video game marathon, and played for almost 3 days straight. I think that 2.5 million may be correct (as ridiculous as it sounds), although I think it took over a decade to track down the identity of the guy who got that score (he died after falling off his roof back in the 80's).

-- David Koppel (eyemnot@comcast.net), May 21, 2003.

What a lot of people don't know is that after the 50th rollback in the original Space Invaders, the difficulty level plateaus. Once you've managed to break 60,000, it is in fact possible to keep going without it getting any more difficult.

*Knows from experience, with a high score of 78,000 on a VB version of the game*

-- Myushu Kamsaki (BeyondExistance00@hotmail.com), August 20, 2003.