Heavily influenced in its design philosophy by Tetsuya Mizoguchi’s magnum opus Rez, HyperSpace Invaders II: Pixel Edition is a love letter to abstract japanese shmups such as Kenta Chao’s cult classic rRootage or Taito’s contemporary classics like Space Invaders Infinity Gene or Groove Coaster.

And do you remember Half Minute Hero? In this game from japanese studio Opus, the premise was to doing a postmodernist retelling of a classic JRPG structure by synthesising all its mechanics in 30 frenzy seconds. HIII does something similar with the shooting genre. Each one of its 10 main levels is played individually with separate leaderboards. And each level is designed based on the structure of a musical track, transforming incorporeal sounds in fascinating musical allegories that talks about the overuse of drugs and the mysticism found in Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+’s neon glow corridors.

With the duration of each track running in the 3 to 10 minutes range, HIII does a magnificent work condensing in such a limited time frame the refulgent 0rgasm sensation of doing an entire 50 minutes loop in your all-time favorite shmup. Each song has a very different taste and feeling based on the pulsing tempo of its BPM. Sometimes, playing HIII is an experience similar to enjoy the classic approach of a Galaga derived shmup full of charisma and cheerful love like Eschatos. And in other occasions, it’s more close to play a Bullet Terror Hell Madness that occurs inside Michael Haneke’s perverted mind.

The key to express why HIII is an instant classic and one of the better shmups conceived in the last decade is the term Destruction. For years, the shooting games have been obsessed with the idea of putting more an more bullets on screen. In the mid-‘90s, this increase of the number of bullets on screen had a sense. It was a manner of breaking the technical limitations of its time period, pushing the hardware to make captivating and almost impossible dreams of the past come true. But with this race to increase the number of bullets on screen, comes a problem. In the last years a lot of shmups have focused its experience in the immaterial act of dodging bullets, rather than in the physical and sensitive pleasure of spreading the Chaos and Destruction causing a lot of things to explode.

HIII is able to put put dozen of billion of bullets at the same time on screen. But it never lost its focus from the infinite pleasure of Destruction. And even its smart scoring system is centered around the idea of Total Destruction. Every single ship destroyed makes more an more powerful our main weapon. And we have an even more destructive secondary laser weapon that can trespass small bullets, clearing the screen of enemy fire. Because HIII is conscious that making a billion of things explode at the same time in an utopian chain while it burns our retinas with abrasive flashing lights, is much more fun that simply see some solitary bullets floating in the vastness and solitude of space.

After decades of playing every single shmup classic, I can say that none other game has been able to equal the frantic sense of intensity and absolute level of Destruction found in HyperSpace Invaders II: Pixel Edition. And the proverbial idea of making of each track a full playthrough, highlights this captivating-senses joyful destructive feeling, fusing Eros and Psyche in a dazzling and cosmological 0rgasm. Condensing in 5 minutes runs the sense of realization of be able to complete an entire shmup classic. Distilling only the most intense and significative parts. And showing in every second the reasons we play videoagmes. The reasons we love videogames.

And the random nature of each level and its adaptive level of difficulty, makes of each playthrough a completely new experience. Every time that you play HyperSpace Invaders II: Pixel Edition, you have this magic sensation of going to your favorite arcade in the 90s, seeing that a new shmup cabinet from Toaplan has arrived. This incomparable feeling of experimenting for the first time a completely new universe full of flashing lights and captivating electronic tracks. That comes packed with masterful bullet patterns and a perfect crafted scoring system.

HyperSpace Invaders II: Pixel Edition is the most accomplished occidental shmup to date. That feels like one hundred of forgotten japanese classics in the same game.


( The writer of this review is not an English native. So you should expect occasional grammar errors. I apologize in advance. )

This game has so many flashing lights it might turn you away from flashy retro games in the future. Move left and right, firing happens automatically. I forced myself to play past level 2 but couldn't stand it any longer. Repetitive sound, music, level design--the cliche cheap indie game feeling is present in full.

Loving this game!
Wow, this really deserves to be more popular! One of my favourite shooters on steam...and I've released 3 myself :)

Really cool and smart mechanics combined with a really great, OTT style make this soooo much fun.

Well played dev, I REALLY hope this ends up getting more attention.

One glorious shmup. It has all the colours and then some more! It needs the mother of all photosensitive epilepsy warnings!

I have a feeling my eyeballs are going to hate me tomorrow, but they love me today. Oh, they love me today!

If you look at the trailer, you will have no idea what's going on. At least, I didn't.

What's happening is you're a little shooty thing that forever shoots upwards (autofire! nice and relaxing!), and all the hundreds of other things on the screen heading downwards are enemies, bullets and power-ups.

All you really need to pay attention to, in order to survive, is you need to not run into anything that's not a power-up. It's fairly simple; there are only two power-ups, and one of them are "souls" that auto-target you when you hit an enemy. Oh, and - you can move anywhere, you're not restricted to left and right. :)

As well as your autofiring gun, you can push the fire button to shoot a second gun. This gun kills (most) enemy bullets, and is powered by the souls I mentioned earlier.

Each level lasts as long as the music that's playing in it. The idea is to shoot as many enemies as you can in that time, keep up a chain, and not get killed too much.

So - fun, simple, classic arcade-style mechanics, a challenge that seems *just right* (well, it scales up as you go through the levels, but it seems eventually doable), plus crazy visuals (this is an understatement!), good music, tight gameplay that doesn't give you a split second to blink - all makes for a great, exhilarating time!

But I think this is a game to play in short bursts.

Just in case my eyes decide to go "you know what? this is too much! we quit!!". Haha!

UPDATE: Just so you know, the next day arrived and I turned out not to be blind after all!

EPILEPSY
LSD
yay

Very fun simple game. If I could recommend anything it would be that you put an epilepsy warning before the title screen and on your store page.

There should be a warning in game or on this product page.
That can be f****** dangerous.

This game was bought during Summer Sale 2016 for 0,49 Cents, which is a fair price.
The full retail of five Dollars is to much for the content this game delivers.
What you get are around 7 playable levels based on the technotracks that blast in the background.
The Gameplay (=number of enemies) seems to fit the music curremtly playing.

Gameplay

For the game itself, the gameplay is acceptable, decent even.
As this is a take on classic space invaders, you are shooting at enemies coming from the
top of the screen. you can move left, right, forwards and backwards.
That, excluding the inspired sprites, concludes the similarities to the base material.

Instead of having a static screen, the screen scrolls upwards with enemies coming from
every side. Some enemies can shoot, too, which fills the screen with loads of
enemies and bullets. If your defensethingy touches anything, you're dead.

Your ship constantly fires, which was a bit confusing at first, but considering
the loads of enemies on screen, you would not want to stop firing anyway.
Alternatively, you can press the fire button to concentrate your fire into a red
beam. Doing so will deplete your powergauge, but is also the only way to
destroy enemy-bullets. This is the must strategic feature in the game.

Come to think of it, I wonder why they bothered to base this on "Space invaders".
This is a bullet-hell shooter. And as a lowprice game itself, this might be fun for an hour.

As a game compared to the genre, this game clearly has some flaws.
First, the game is light on content, which is compensated in the price.
However, the full retail is still a bit much for a shooter wthout alternate modes
(or local multiplayer).
The Shooter-part is solid, but unimaginative. wiggeling left and right, shooting,
trying not to get hit. Not much more to it.

Audio und Visuals

Speaking of trying not to get hit.
The goal in a good bullet-hell is to see patterns in enemy attacks you can navigate through.
That might not always be easy, but managable, with a clear visual distinction between enemies and
bullets, powerups and so forth.
That being said, the graphics and audio of this game were a dealbreaker for me.
Shooting your way though the walls on enemies unleashes lightning effects close to the
pain level of getting laser eye surgery on the white hot surface of the sun.
It's hard enough already to navigate to the random waves of enemies, bullets and powerups
that all seem way to simliar, it gets ten times harder when, everytime you hit anything,
your game screams "FLASHBANG" and scorches your retina with explosions of
white, blue and red.
Hell, I played Beathazard Ultra and this is the first instance I needed to squint my eyes
to avoid agonizing pain.
Also, the technosoundtrack is a bit heavy for my taste, but whatever.

Considering all of this, I would recommend this game for the discounted price, you'll get
a fun hour out of it.
For full retail and as a shooter in general, there are far better titles you can play.
And considering this might be the last thing you see before your eyes are torched
beyond oblivion (and hyperspace, i guess), you might reconsider.

It has beautiful bright flashing colors and techno music and if I press the buttons correctly it validates me by saying that I succeeded. The controls are crisp, the responses perfect.

This is all that I ever wanted from a video game.

I feel that this can be the Space Invaders/Galaga equivalent of Geometry Dash. All it needs is community ability to make and distribute levels/music.

Well I just cracked the 3rd level and things are getting really intense now! The speed and fluidity in this game are phenomenal. I hope the dev will implement Leaderboards.
Another thing is the music. It really gets you into the atmosphere of the game since it works great with the visuals: hyperactive and extremely engaging. When I saw Psykovsky in the tracklist, I got psyched to unlock that level. Awesome stuff!

You'll want to skip this one if you have problems with flashing lights. The video and screenshots don't make it justice, during the whole gameplay your screen will be flashing more than those old flash videos that purposely tried to trigger epilepsy attacks on people.

Epilepsy attacks aside the game is pretty neat. It's a fast paced bullet hell with a single button that turns your auto-firing attack into a laser. Your laser is stronger than your main attack and it can destroy enemy projectiles but it drains your score and power. Everything else is standard for bullet hell games.

The game doesn't has that much content so I suggest getting it during a sale.
Anyway, I enjoyed it even though I get a headache every time I play it.