I have mixed feelings about this one. 11 years after the original, the core gameplay is still fun, but it was always a starting point to expand upon. Galaga and the hundreds of other shooters that followed would prove that out, but how do you make a sequel to Space Invaders without just turning it into another vertical shooter? That's the challenge Taito fumbled a bit here.

While it does offer a few variants on the original gameplay, it also just resorts to stereotypical vertical shooter segments that just don't feel like Space Invaders. One notable omission are the bases from the original game. While most retrospectives focus on the aliens, and rightfully so, I think the bases should have been kept and expanded upon to differentiate this from all those other schmups. Maybe they could have you power one up temporarily to act as a turret, or determine your powerups based on how many bases you were able to keep from being destroyed completely. Something of that nature would have made this feel more like an evolution of Space Invaders rather than a name stuck to another arcade shooter.