Space Invaders : The Haunted Cabinet

One day, I was watching ID Network. Then, the commercials came on. It was a commercial, short at that, about a store that sold old restored arcade cabinets. My dream! Really cheap prices, to. I had some money and went to the store. There was Pac-Man, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Gorf, Galaga, Pong, Street Fighter II. So cool! But I went there for one cab: Space Invaders.

There was a man who worked there named Stewart Dickinsson. He was nice. I asked him if he had any Space Invaders cabinets. He said &quot;yes&quot; and directed me to one.

The cab looked brand-new! But it was different. It was called &quot;Space Invaders: Xtreme&quot;. Yes, the generic 80's &quot;Xtreme&quot; that was a cool thing I guess. The cabinet was bright red and was shaped as a rectangle with abit of a slanted outward section around the monitor. There was the artwork of those hadowy horned sasquach looking things on the side and some Jupiter looking planet. Weird how they would use a gasouse planet.

So, the man sold it to me for $300.00. I went home, plugged it in, and tried it out. It had a switch in the change compartment to turn freeplay on/off. I tried freeplay. The monitor used that mirrored screen, using a piece of cardboard with a picture of a very polluted looking Earth on the bottum of the screen, as well as some pretty nice looking outer-space above it.

I started playing. There was a quick intro of the invaders decending quickly right into the area where the game starts, like in Space Inavders Part II. The screen was Monochrome. The controls where 2 buttons to move the cannon left and right, and a bright red button to shoot a laser. Unlike the original, there could be up to 3 lasers on the screen making the game much easier. ALOT more easier then you'd expect.

But things got weird. After level 9, the screen said &quot;BONUS&quot;, writen out using the invaders. The level started with a HUGE invader, the one that Taito uses as their &quot;mascot&quot; or something. It shot at me. I shot at it. But when I hit it, a blood curddling scream came out and blood came out of the invader. I was freaked.

Then, the screen broke, followed by an ear-raping squeeling noise. Then, a hand reached out and tried choking me! But I punched it and quickly took a hammer and smashed the hand. I then took it to a cliff and pushed it off, destroying it completely.

When I went home to clean up the mess, I saw the blood from the hand spelled out &quot;look behind you&quot;.

And when I did, the man who sold me the machine was hanging there.