Invading Space

July 17, 2006 10:13 AM

Human Space Invaders
1 theatre
67 extras
4 hours of shooting
390 images
--------------
= 3 minutes of video [16 MB QT]
[Site in French, video without words]
posted by kika (45 comments total)

Pretty neat.

However, if I remember correctly, SI does not allow you to shoot a bullet until the last fired bullet has hit something or left the screen.

/anal
posted by dobbs at 10:21 AM on July 17, 2006

I believe you get two bullets in the air at one time.
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:23 AM on July 17, 2006

[this is fucking amazing]
posted by mathowie at 10:23 AM on July 17, 2006

You Tube
posted by empath at 10:23 AM on July 17, 2006

In the Atari 2600 version of the game, you could get around that limitation by holding down the "GAME RESTART" lever while powering up the console. This allowed you to have two bullets in the air simultaneously, :)

Yes, I am a giant dork.
posted by DWRoelands at 10:23 AM on July 17, 2006

You do remember correctly, and I had the same thought when watching.

There's also a pong version of this project. Site just went down, though.
posted by Durhey at 10:24 AM on July 17, 2006

awesome
posted by raedyn at 10:24 AM on July 17, 2006

I wonder if it was fun to shoot that, or just a giant pain in the ass? How much of it was planned out? (I wish my french was better. I'll have to show the page to my bilingual buddy and see what he can glean.)
posted by raedyn at 10:25 AM on July 17, 2006

[this is good]

Someone needs to rip the images into a playable flash game.
posted by loquacious at 10:25 AM on July 17, 2006

cooool!
posted by eyeballkid at 10:26 AM on July 17, 2006

I love it!

(And since it is now mandatory that a mefite shit upon each thread...Is it not possible that the pixels/people were photoshopped instead of shooting the entire thing frame-by-frame?)
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:27 AM on July 17, 2006

Pretty excellent.
posted by markavatar at 10:27 AM on July 17, 2006

No wonder I always feel like my space is being invaded when I go to a theatre.
posted by mazola at 10:28 AM on July 17, 2006

pretty cool

I'd imagine it would be a pia to shoot, but the end result is super
posted by edgeways at 10:29 AM on July 17, 2006

Such violence in today's video games...
posted by NationalKato at 10:30 AM on July 17, 2006

Very cool. I wish they had used different colors for the bullets (I realize they were trying to be true to the original).

I also wish they had set it up to get it down to one invader who zips around really fast -- finally blowing him away at the last possible second.
posted by pardonyou? at 10:34 AM on July 17, 2006

"Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot at where I was going to be! Mwahahahahaha!"

Hee hee. Now I wanna see more. Do Centipede next!
posted by Gator at 10:37 AM on July 17, 2006

I was kind of meh until the flying saucer came across. Really cool.

Only four hours? That's impressive.
posted by bardic at 10:47 AM on July 17, 2006

Futurama : Raiders of the Lost Arcade (YouTube)
posted by blue_beetle at 10:52 AM on July 17, 2006 [5 favorites]

Were there really Space Invaders machines that were set to give 6 lives?
posted by majick at 10:54 AM on July 17, 2006

Wow. They also did Pong.
posted by mkultra at 10:57 AM on July 17, 2006

That was cool as hell.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:58 AM on July 17, 2006

Oh that is just excellent. Thanks kika.
posted by peacay at 11:03 AM on July 17, 2006

This is very cool. Good post Kika!
posted by djeo at 11:13 AM on July 17, 2006

I love it. Genius!

The dolt that posted it on youtube however, is not. Not very nice to re-post copyrighted works. Not fair on the guys who worked so hard on this.
posted by dabitch at 11:22 AM on July 17, 2006

majick writes "Were there really Space Invaders machines that were set to give 6 lives?"

IIRC (which I probably don't), the easiest setting on the arcade version gave you six lives.
posted by Mitheral at 11:31 AM on July 17, 2006

holding down the "GAME RESTART" lever while powering up the console ... allowed you to have two bullets in the air simultaneously

Christ on a bagel, now I'm going to have to haunt the thrift store for an Atari console just to experience that.
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:08 PM on July 17, 2006

If I remember correctly, the original did not use human beings and stop motion photography.
posted by redteam at 12:36 PM on July 17, 2006 [2 favorites]

wowsers. that is really inspired.
posted by Busithoth at 12:46 PM on July 17, 2006

wowsers. yeah, rather than just wow. indeed. inspired by. yes.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 1:05 PM on July 17, 2006

Lame. Everyone knows that the first thing you do in SI is blast away the bunkers yourself, so as to get direct shots at the approaching invaders.

And if that strategy were to mean mass carnage and wholesale human destruction from flinging people up a couple rows, again and again, atop their stunned and helpless compatriots; well, so much the better.
posted by yhbc at 1:17 PM on July 17, 2006

4 hours shooting!? It should have taken them no more than 30 minutes... plus a little editing time to add/remove pixels.
posted by tomplus2 at 2:32 PM on July 17, 2006

I also wish they had set it up to get it down to one invader who zips around really fast -- finally blowing him away at the last possible second.

Yeah I'm sort of disappointed they didn't do that part. B+.
posted by fleacircus at 2:35 PM on July 17, 2006

Yeah, now that I think about it, I'm rather disappointed in the Hollywood ending, myself. Bad guys all defeated, everything wrapped up in a nice little tidy package. If they had spent any time on character development, I might have cared what happened to these people, but as it is, meh.
posted by Gator at 2:48 PM on July 17, 2006

Round 2 is an exact repeat of Round 1. Why double up the exact same thing just to make it longer?

Still, 10 kinds of cool.
posted by willnot at 2:52 PM on July 17, 2006

Very nice. As others have pointed out, crap strategy in the play though.
posted by tellurian at 5:12 PM on July 17, 2006

Cool. Now do Frogger.

and ...

MetaFilter: it is now mandatory that a mefite shit upon each thread
posted by bwg at 6:03 PM on July 17, 2006

Freaking awesome. And I agree that the frames need to be ripped and adapted into a playable game.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:05 PM on July 17, 2006

How big a theater do you need to do Half-Life 2?
posted by starman at 7:10 PM on July 17, 2006

it is now mandatory that a mefite shit upon each thread - bwg

Now? Hardly a new rule. This has been The Way for years.
posted by raedyn at 7:55 PM on July 17, 2006

Notepad Invaders. Just cuz.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:18 PM on July 17, 2006

I like the actor credits -- "Hurray, I'm a pixel!"
posted by LordSludge at 9:06 PM on July 17, 2006

I agree, but it wasn't me who first said it. 8-)
posted by bwg at 12:27 AM on July 18, 2006

From the Youtube page empath linked to: KEN ISHII VS FLR - SPACE INVADERS 2003

Probably the deepest and most poignant space-invaders-related thing ever.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:20 AM on July 18, 2006

Youtube is broken at the core. The youtube link now reads This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Guillaume REYMOND because its content was used without permission and the first random video after that is Human Pong, also uploaded without permission from its creators. There should be a way for people to flag this as they flag spam-blogs at blogspot.com, shouldn't there?
And i-am-bored has the space invadors as well, embedded via dailymotion. Le sigh.
posted by dabitch at 3:16 AM on July 19, 2006