Video game experts are recruited by the military to fight 1980s-era video game characters who've attacked New York.
When aliens misinterpret video feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them, they attack the Earth using games like PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Centipede and Space Invaders as models for their various assaults. President Will Cooper has to call on his childhood best friend, '80s video game champion Sam Brenner, to lead a team of old-school arcaders to defeat aliens and save the planet: Ludlow Lamonsoff (Josh Gad) the "Centipede" champ, and Eddie Plant (Peter Dinklage) the "Donkey Kong" champ.
At a video-game arcade in 1982 with his friend Will Cooper, 13-year-old Sam Brenner discovers he can master the games by spotting patterns. Participating in a video-game championship, he loses in a match with obnoxious arcade player Eddie Plant in Donkey Kong. A videocassette with footage of the event is included in a time capsule that is launched into space. 33 years later, Brenner has become an installer of home-theater systems while Cooper is the President of the United States. In Guam, a U.S. military base is attacked by UFOs of Galaga that turn pieces of the base into small glowing cubes and one of the soldiers is abducted..
Humanity's thirst for making contact with extraterrestrial life forms turns into a real nightmare when a technologically advanced race of aliens misinterprets a friendly transmission as an act of war. Now, as the infuriated otherworldly beings deploy waves of enormous versions of arcade game characters to retaliate, mankind's fate rests in the hands of the former video-game champion and now home-theatre installer, Sam Brenner, and a handful of old-school arcade gamers. Do they have what it takes to stop this pixelated polychromatic menace?