Space Invaders with real lasers is as delightfully dangerous as you'd imagine

What happens when you turn Space Invaders into a live action game, complete with an actual fire hazard? We've already seen one recent clip bringing video games into real-life, which seemed fine up until Adam Sandler showed up. But Maker Martin Raynsford has restored the dream using paper invaders, Arduino and a laser cutter.

In time for Arduino Day, falling on March 28th this year, this fun health and safety risk uses paper invaders attached to a plate, which in turn alternates movement using a stepper motor. During this, your defense is an 80W laser cutter operated by an Arduino Nano controller linked to a PC via USB, so you can watch the game via an overhead webcam to keep you safe from the genuine fire risk.

The game has gone through plenty of testing to ensure that the invaders aren't too close together, causing the whole game to burn down. In the end, following following tweaks, he said "the game played well and resulted in flamey death for the Space Invaders and not the laser cutter, (so) I consider that to be a win condition."