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 "yes" and directed me to one.

The cab looked brand-new! But it was different. It was called "Space Invaders: Xtreme". Yes, the generic 80's "Xtreme" 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 "BONUS", writen out using the invaders. The level started with a HUGE invader, the one that Taito uses as their "mascot" 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 earraping 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 "look behind you".

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

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