DELUXE SPACE INVADERS

• HIDDEN MESSAGE: During the attract mode, press RIGHT+FIRE+2P and then LEFT+FIRE+1P. After a few seconds the message “Taito Corp” will appear beneath the high score (picture #1).

• Rainbow trick - Leave one of the bottom-most aliens to kill last, which (when shot) will give you the “rainbow” display and bonus points – 1,000 for shooting the bottom-left invader last (picture #2), 800 for the bottom-sixth (from left to right) invader, and 500 point for any invader from the bottom two rows.

• Mystery ship trick (1) - By counting your shots, hitting the UFO with every 23rd shot yields the maximum 300 points. Maximum numbers of UFOs for the first 3 screens are 8, 6, and 4.

• Mystery ship trick (2) - After the 1st wave, the saucer will drop reinforcements. If you manage to shoot one of these as they’re falling into the formation, it turns upside-down and falls down to the bunker level (picture #3), where it lands sideways (and can be shot away like a bunker)!

• Extra life trick - Finish off a wave of invaders with 55 shots or less. If you go over 55, shoot over 255 (rollover the shot counter) and start counting again.

• There are 2 different intermissions – one says “SOS!!”, and the other (which only appears occasionally) says “SOS!!” followed by “ENGINE TROUBLE” (picture #4). To trigger the Engine Trouble one, you must shoot a non-blinking mystery ship and a blinking mystery ship (in that order), and then end the round. {Eduardo Mello}

• Here is the ordered UFO score table. It is a circular list, and the pointer moves every time you fire:
100,050,050,100,150,100,100,050,300,100,100,100,050,150,100,050 {Eduardo Mello}

• RUMOR: Back in 2000 in the RGVAC newsgroup (LINK), Brian Deuel claimed it was possible to shoot all of the invaders except the first two rows (the "skulls"), the invaders would stop marching, leaving you to endlessly shoot mystery saucers. He also claimed he did it and witnessed someone else do it as well, but both myself and someone else (VIDEO) using MAME and save states confirmed this wasn’t true.