Space Invaders Emulator

About

Space Invaders is Tomohiro Nishikado's 1978 fixed-shooter arcade game for Taito, built around the Intel 8080 CPU, in which a laser cannon defends against descending waves of aliens. This is a from-scratch emulator for the Intel 8080 CPU and the arcade hardware behind the original 1978 Space Invaders, written in C# on .NET Core with SDL2 for graphics and sound. It runs as a desktop app on Windows, macOS, and Linux, or on a Meadow F7 Feather microcontroller as a standalone hardware device, and includes save states, rewind, and an interactive debugger, backed by over 600 unit tests covering CPU opcodes.

Getting started

Running it requires supplying your own Space Invaders ROM set and WAV sound-effect files, since the project doesn't include them. It can be launched from the command line with options to choose the starting number of ships and the score needed for an extra ship, and supports local two-player play; an optional debug mode adds save/load states, breakpoints, single-stepping, and rewind through CPU execution.

Additional notes

Other

The project also ships a standalone 8080 disassembler tool and a port that runs on a Meadow F7 Feather microcontroller with a physical display and buttons.