PlayStation Basement #46 - PD Ultraman Invader

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on July 13th, 2019.

Today is Saturday, and it is time for everyone’s favorite, the PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement appears every week with a review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Shuwatch!

July 10^th is Ultraman Day all around the cosmos, so this week we’ll take a look at an early game that never left Japan – PD Ultraman Invader. This game is Space Invaders with Ultraman characters, though the original Space Invaders is also included. I believe that the “PD” means “parody deformed” (like the SD for “super deformed”), as this is a comedic crossover of Ultraman characters. PD Ultraman Invader was released December 22^nd, 1995 by Bandai.

Though I had been interested in Ultraman since around when this game was released, I did not know what it was until later. I have some little, rubber finger puppets of various Ultraman monsters that I got from an arcade when I was little, but I didn’t know what they were back then. I only recently saw Ultraman three years ago, and I only have experience with the original series. The franchise is a tokusatsu (special effects) television show of giant monsters and similarly giant heroes. Some of the monster costumes and sets also appeared in Godzilla (another Toho production). This game features many different Ultraman and their corresponding villains. I don’t know all of the details of the characters here, but basically, the Ultramen are alien heroes who protect the Earth from evil aliens.

The cover art shows tons of Baltans, and a few other villainous aliens, behind Ultraman. The characters are in simple 3D with big heads. The title is displayed at the bottom of the image with stars filling in the empty spaces. It’s not a bad cover, but it’s not great either. I do like the repetition of the monsters.

PD Ultraman Invader isn’t much to look at. The normal Space Invaders game looks as you’d expect. The Ultraman game uses pre-rendered sprites that get smaller the further back they are compared with your character. It’s like you are looking into the scene as if one were to look into a shoebox diorama. The defense bunkers of the original game have been replaced with various bits of junk ranging from trucks to buildings. These objects don’t display damage as well as the bunkers of 1978. The background arenas for the various fights between Ultraman and the invaders are a bit muddy and pixelated, but they are varied. Some look pretty cool in terms of the colors used. The FMVs, popping up after every other level or so, are limited in animation. This is a cheap production in some ways.

The sound is just sort of average. Musically, PD Ultraman Invader has some nice tracks that sound like a more dance-based Mega Man. There is also the original Ultraman theme. The sound effects are rickety. They recall the 1966 series decently, though the quality isn’t up to what I expect from a CD. Some of the voice effects are pretty amusing.

The gameplay is amusing as well. It’s a bit repetitive, but it’s almost exactly what you should expect when I say it’s Ultraman-flavored Space Invaders. The main differences are that the characters change every level, the camera follows Ultraman around, the UFO is sometimes replaced by an Ultraman character that rewards the hero with a powerup, and the last enemy of a stage doesn’t go down with one shot. Usually the last enemy will take three shots, but sometimes they might surround themselves with false clones. Some levels have similar objectives such as pushing the enemy back with each shot until they actually fall or having to defeat the boss character while also holding back their waves of monsters. It’s Space Invaders with some small changes. The story mode even has a clear ending.

The other modes include the classic Space Invaders (which offers a few different visual styles based on different arcade releases), a survival mode (basically the Ultraman-style graphics with the traditional non-stop gameplay), and a versus mode (players defeat waves to send waves over to their opponent) with its own visual style of 2D sprites of Ultraman characters. The versus mode is particularly fun and simple and pumps this game up. Having the classic score attack style is always fun too.

One last thing I’d like to mention is that PD Ultraman Invader feels like a Virtual Boy game. I think it would have worked well considering the sprite scaling. I have no idea if this game was intended for that console at all, so don’t take this as anything beyond a small potential.

PD Ultraman Invader is an odd game for sure. It feels a bit cheap – a classic game with a visual style based on an extremely popular series of superhero shows in a not-particularly-sensible crossover style. It feels a bit cynical. It feels a bit pointless. I kind of feel like this absurdity is the point, and, honestly, PD Ultraman Invader is a fun game. It’s not gonna win any awards. It’s just a fun and silly game.

PD Ultraman Invader receives a Good.

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