MGA VR-3D Space Invaders review?

[MarbleMad]

I suppose this is a review? Since i mentioned I was getting this in the 'all the 3d games' thread, I thought I'd do a thorough write up of it.

MGA Electronics
VR 3D True Colour Virtual Reality System
SPACE INVADERS
Date: 2001 or later (Space Invaders (c) Taito Corporation 1978)

The VR 3D unit its self comes in 2 part. A 'virtual reality' style headset and a wireless remote control joystick. General build quality is good.

The display is made with 2 LCD screens with colour and printed overlays, backlit with natural light. Like the old Tomy 3D games there appears to be 2 instances of the display, one for each eye, presumably to create the stereoscopic 3d effect. Unlike the Tomytronic games this is achieved with a separate lcd screen for each eye. But I'll get back to that.

The game its self is a straightforward 'space invaders' shooter although instead of a missile base moving at the bottom of a static screen, the base remains stationary and the 'virtual world' moves left and right as you battle the alien invaders. The display is crisp, bright and colourful and the sound (delivered through stereo headphone buds) is adequate. It even has the odd speech effect thrown in.

So overall not bad except for one rather astonishing problem.. the 3D!
To create the illusion of a Stereoscopic 3D image you need 2 images viewed from slightly different angles. These represent the 2 slightly different views your 2 eyes produce. The greater the difference in the image the stronger the 3d effect becomes. Why do I mention this obvious fact? Well MGA have built a system that should produce an excellent 3d image. It's not like the comparatively crummy RADICA equivalent which doesn't in fact use 2 images but instead uses a single image and a prism lens, the VR3D should be better than the old tomy games, the engineering is spot on but in the case of 'Space Invaders' they've made 2 fatal errors.

1 - the difference between the 2 images, on which the strength of the 3D illusion depends is VERY SMALL so the illusion is very slight.

2 - and this is a doozey. They've put the images in THE WRONG WAY ROUND! That's right, they've got the left eye image in the right eye and the right eye image in the left eye! What the heck?
Am i sure about this, you ask? Well yeh I think so and I'm a bit of a 3D nut. I've generated 3d images professionally so i know what I'm talking about.
As the lines of invaders move down the screen they become larger so they should obviously move closer in the 3d plane, but they don't. The way things are set up they theoretically move further away although since the effect is so weak and in direct contradiction to the illusion the invader sprite size is displaying, the overall effect is the image just looks flat

What a wasted opportunity.

I'll add some images to this thread if folks are interested. What I'd now REALLY like to know is what are the rest of the games in the series like? Do they have weak 3d or strong 3d? Is this error a one off or did they screw up the lot of them? It's a little difficult for me to find out as these games didn't appear to get a UK release and I had to import Space Invaders from the US, so if anyone can find some of the other games in the series I'd be very keen to hear your thought on them.

As far as i know they are:

space invaders
SKATEBOARDING BLITZ
Snowboard Blitz
BMX Circuit
Dirt Bike Rally
Spider-Man
http://www.mgae.com/2004_product_pages/Products/Spider-Man2/VR3D.asp
http://www.conturodesign.com/sites/mgae/new_products_2003/Hulk/vr3d.htm