Space Invaders is another of those classic games that pretty much everybody must have played at some point, and for todays advent calendar entry we’ve chosen the rarest of all the invaders. It is of course, the Mothership!

The Mothership always freaked you out when it appeared. The distinctive woo-woo-woo-woo alarm contrasting against the standard invaders grunting sound. This sound always kicked in slightly before the Mothership would appear, and it would then be a split second decision on the part of the player. Keep picking off the standard aliens, or go for the bonus points with a shot at the Mothership.

The most annoying thing with attempting to shoot the Mothership was that you always missed by such a small fraction, but miss it you did, with mere pixels robbing you of any chance of making a hit. If you did manage to hit, you were awarded a score of either 50, 100, 150 or 300 points. Whilst this may seem random, there was in fact a method that would ensure you always got 300 points. You had to shoot 22 bullets (they don’t have to hit anything) and hit the Mothership on the 23rd for 300 points. After that, it became hitting on the 15th shot, with the counting system restarting at the next wave. I’ve not tried this so can’t vouch for the accuracy, but it’s the kind of crazy thing I would expect to be true!

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