nInvaders is a Space Invader clone, was made more than a decade ago, still runs even without any updates or patches for nearly 13 years.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi58Z6uoR4NRcwOI7XreAksMPrSBa41LBt30PafJMHj0z4cPeyO1f1wPRN_1Q0lK1kx0R5hHtNS8RjTbGVQzTnS5zk1oNV2C2Iuf_8brXekpgcgMMZacFH-NhVo-SMISQ0WnMYR-z0-N10/s800-Ic42/ninvaders.gif

Actual speed as recorded

Not sure if it’s by design or just outdated code, you will need to defeat the invaders in less than 20 seconds, which I don’t believe that’s plausible. Therefore, I edited the code, watch this video from 30” mark:

  • Time dilation devide: nInvader.c:L33 s/50/10/

  • Invisible Laser Destroyer: playerReloadMissile.c:L179 s/if/while/

  • Secret spell: UUDDLRLRBA

    #!/bin/bash

echo -e '\e[31;1m*** CHEAT MODE ENABLED ***\e[0m'
echo -e '- \e[34;1mTime dilation deviced\[0m    : \e[1;32mON\e[0m'
echo -e '- \e[34;1mInvisible Laser Destroyer\[0m: \e[1;32mUPGRADED\e[0m'

Note

Turns out, it’s a 13-year-old bug, and everyone had played it without knowing it or even questioning it. I’ve forked it and patched the bug, you can get the updated nInvaders. (2016-01-21T08:29:10Z)

It has one command-line option for changing difficulty level, -l 0 for NIGHTMARE level and -l 9 for the easiest setting. There is also two builtin cheats, L for one more life and W to skip the level.

nInvaders was created by Thomas Dettbarn in 2002, written in C with ncurses under the GPLv2, currently version 0.1.1 (2003-05-08).