New on the Shelf: Space Invaders Comes to the Game Boy

Every so often a Game Boy cartridge carries a piece of gaming history far bigger than itself. This arrival is one of them: Space Invaders, one of the most historically loaded releases in the entire Game Boy library, bringing one of the most influential arcade games ever made to the handheld.

One of the most influential arcade games ever, shrunk to the little green screen.

What It Is

This is the officially branded 1994 edition of Taito's arcade landmark, the game that helped launch the entire video-game boom, now shrunk down to the little green screen. What makes the Game Boy version especially notable is that it was Super Game Boy enhanced, adding a technical layer, colour and a decorative border, to what is otherwise a deliberately minimalist monochrome shooter. So it stands out less for lavish packaging than for what it represents: a genuine arcade legend, faithfully carried onto Nintendo's handheld and given a small modern upgrade in the process.

Why It Joined the Collection

A collection about the Game Boy is also, inevitably, a collection about the wider history of games the console absorbed, and few titles carry more of that history than Space Invaders. Having it here connects the handheld directly back to the arcade era that preceded it, and its Super Game Boy support ties it neatly to the other enhanced titles in the collection, showing how Nintendo's adapter gave even the oldest ideas a fresh coat of colour. It is a small cartridge that lets the collection tell a very big story.

Space Invaders is documented, with photographs, on its own page in the collection.