Stratovox

The lower half of the screen looks like the blue surface of a moon or planet. There are men lined up the right side of the screen and alien ships fly out, swirl around the screen and eventually try to grab the men. The ships fly up the side and then across the top where you have a chance to shoot them and reclaim your man. At the end of the level the men from the side of the screen are counted and you are given bonus points for each one remaining.

This was one of the first color games and might be the first with voice. When the men are grabbed from the side they say "Help Me! Help Me!" and if you save them from the alien ships it says "Very Good". The aliens also taunt you with "We'll be back" -- all of this being in a monotone and cheap sounding voice. It also says "Lucky!" for each man that the aliens did not grab.

You shoot missiles at astronauts before they can safely walk across the gantry while spaceships try to strike the missile launcher. The launcher is at the bottom of the screen and can be moved left and right only.
/
/There were two oddities to this game: 1 - It is very low scoring even for the late 70s. The score turns back over to 00000 at 100,000. However, once turned over, the scoring tally would contain 5 digits, even if the first 3 were zeros ie 99950 00050. 2 - This game could be played blindfolded as the pattern repeats after every attack. So, move the launcher all the way left, count to two, move all the way to the right, count to seven and fire, count to two and fire again...youll hit all astronauts or, if you prefer, cosmonauts before they could cross the gantry.Also, although the game had a sound board that included words and phrases, bars in those days were always so packed, and loud, you couldn here it anyway. Maybe you could here it at the mall arcades. The words and phrases added nothing to the game. If you didn know what to do after pushing PLAY, the game would be over in about 10 seconds. I usually walked away from it when I approached 30,000 the second time around as it got boring. You could literally play forever. NOTE I could be a bit off regarding the exact timing, but it was something like 2 7. It had bright graphics.

There were two oddities to this game:

1 - It is very low scoring even for the late 70s. The score turns back over to 00000 at 100,000. However, once turned over, the scoring tally contains 5 digits, even if the first 3 are zeros i.e. 99950 00050.

2 - This game could be played blindfolded as the pattern repeats after every attack. So, move the launcher all the way left, count to two, move all the way to the right, count to seven and fire, count to two and fire again...you'll hit all astronauts or, if you prefer, cosmonauts before they can cross the gantry.

The game is housed in a cabinet that basically looks like most of the other Taito enclosures of that era. The cabinet has chrome T-molding, is red on the lower half, tan/beige up the upper half and has the word TAITO labeled diagonally across each side. The coin door is an early style and is gray in color.

The marquee shows an spaceman firing a gun who says "This is unreal!" on the right side. The left side shows a green spaceship capturing a man who is saying "They got me!".

The frontglass shows an alien ship and several men in spacesuits. One astronaut is saying "Another wave destroyed!"