VOGONS


First post, by carlos12

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In 2024 I made a conversion of the mythical arcade machine Space Invaders. My goal was to make it look like the original. Space Commanders and Space Strike are excellent games, in some senses even superior to the original, but they have many differences in order to avoid copyright infringements. There are other more faithful clones like Invaders 78 but they require VGA. So I wanted to make something that works on any PC/XT or higher with MS-DOS/PC-DOS and a CGA, Hercules [for now Hercules support is on hold] or compatible card.

So in one month of 2024, using spare time, I coded this conversion in assembly language using 1984's MASM 3.0.

The game is completely free and it can be downloaded from the attachment or from my games' site https://arcadeware.itch.io

Here's a video of the gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILZPhaTqzeg

Hope you enjoy it.

Reply 1 of 7, by MagefromAntares

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Hi,

I'm receiving a "WARNING: This Page Has Been Quarantined" warning when I press the download button.

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." - Dune

Reply 2 of 7, by MagefromAntares

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Sorry for the double post, but I still cannot edit my posts on this forum.

What I meant is the download button on itch.io the forum attachment downloads properly 😀

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." - Dune

Reply 3 of 7, by MagefromAntares

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Hi,

This is quite a nice game for a single month of work in assembly, I especially like that you used the alternate CGA palette, I always preferred it to the default one 😉

I haven't yet tried it on a real retro computer, only on a properly configured Dosbox, but it played without problems.

Edit: And now that I have made the third post in this thread the edit option finally appeared 😁

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." - Dune

Reply 4 of 7, by zyzzle

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Thanks for sharing.

Cool game. Keeping Assembly alive in 2026. And I would worry too much about copyright "infringements" on a 1978 game, which has already been copied verbatim hundreds of times.

Your game plays better than the original, anyway. Like the little improvements you've made.

Reply 5 of 7, by carlos12

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zyzzle wrote on 2026-05-01, 21:52:

Thanks for sharing.

Cool game. Keeping Assembly alive in 2026. And I would worry too much about copyright "infringements" on a 1978 game, which has already been copied verbatim hundreds of times.

Your game plays better than the original, anyway. Like the little improvements you've made.

Thank you very much! Second and last ever game I do entirely in assembly... That was kind of a self imposed challenge but for other projects I'm using C, writing in assembly only the time critical parts.

Copyright infringement doesn't concern me at all, but it did the creators of both 1982's Space Commanders (for the Columbia PC clone) and Space Strike (by Michael Abrash).

Thanks again for playing it and for your support.

Reply 6 of 7, by carlos12

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MagefromAntares wrote on 2026-05-01, 18:08:
Hi, […]
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Hi,

This is quite a nice game for a single month of work in assembly, I especially like that you used the alternate CGA palette, I always preferred it to the default one 😉

I haven't yet tried it on a real retro computer, only on a properly configured Dosbox, but it played without problems.

Edit: And now that I have made the third post in this thread the edit option finally appeared 😁

Thank you very much for trying it.

Sorry everyone for the double post, I also still haven't the edit button. I guess I'll get it when I'll reach 20 messages or so.

Reply 7 of 7, by Benedikt

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carlos12 wrote on 2026-05-01, 17:10:

So I wanted to make something that works on any PC/XT or higher with MS-DOS/PC-DOS and a CGA, Hercules [for now Hercules support is on hold] or compatible card.

If you want to speed up the work on a Hercules port a bit, you could take a look at the code of my minimalist CGA emulator TSR HGCGA and help yourself.
It sets a customized Hercules mode with 640x300 pixels and CGA compatible memory model and then leaves everything else to the native CGA drawing routines, which then simply leave every third line blank.