Pepsi Invaders: Редкая игра Atari для Coca-Cola

1983 video game

Pepsi Invaders (erroneously identified as Coke Wins and Coke Invaders) is a non commercially released 1983 fixed shooter video game developed by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. It was commissioned by The Coca Cola Company to be handed out to salespeople at their 1983 sales convention. A reskin of the system's version of Space Invaders, the player shoots down a flying formation of letters spelling "PEPSI", Coca Cola's long time rival. Only 125 copies were distributed.

The game is a modification of Space Invaders, with nearly identical gameplay, but with a number of tweaks. Instead of having limited lives and no time limit as in the original, Pepsi Invaders has unlimited lives and a three minute time limit to complete as many waves of enemies as possible. If any invaders successfully traverse the lowest row, instead of the formation dropping to the ground and ending the game, it merely moves left and right until all the lowest row invaders are destroyed. It is therefore impossible to lose the game. Primary graphic changes affected the invaders, each row of which consists of the letters "P E P S I" followed by a single alien, instead of the original six aliens per row. The letters move up and down as they march but do not otherwise animate. The UFO was changed to look like a flattened Pepsi logo in brand colors. A timer was added, displayed on the ground, which itself has been changed to a Coca Cola like brown color. Due to the original Space Invaders Atari 2600 developer Rick Maurer leaving Atari over payment issues, Atari tasked designer Christopher Omarzu with hacking the original. in a plain white box with an "Atari goes better with Coke" sticker on the cover. The intent was to boost the morale of Coca Cola's employees, but most of the cartridges were discarded by their recipients. Pepsi Invaders has been mistakenly labelled Coke Wins and Coke Invaders, to the confusion of Omarzu. The Guardian included it in its list of the best product placement video games, similarly noting it as an early example of this and a "mischievous" marketing attempt. PC Format felt the marketing was smart, comparing it to The Apprentice. Retro Gamer was critical of Pepsi Invaders due to the letters not moving downward as the ships do in Space Invaders. Copies of the game have sold for up to $1825 on eBay.