By Chris Murdock, Sept. 5th, 2018
Forty years ago in 1978, Tomohiro Nishikado created one of the most influential video games ever, Space Invaders.
Space Invaders was manufactured by Taito in Japan and brought over to the United States by Midway. The premise of the game was that there are five rows of pixelated aliens, and you use a laser cannon to fire at the aliens who would slowly make their way toward the bottom of the screen. As you shoot aliens, their speed (along with the accompanying music) would increase and get faster. Defeating a screen’s worth of aliens would create another wave of aliens and the process would continue until the player lost all their lives and it was game over.
The game was enormously popular. By 1982, the game had grossed two billion dollars and had been ported to the Atari 2600 which caused the system’s sales to quadruple.
Not only did Space Invaders impact the video game industry as a whole, but popularized a new genre of games, the shooter, and early shooters would take the premise of Space Invaders and put their own spin on the genre. Early games that were influenced by Space Invaders includes Galaxian and Galaga. Many more games tended to closely clone Space Invaders including TI invaders and the cash-grab Pepsi Invaders (where you shot at the letters that spelled out “Pepsi”.
The design of the aliens of Space Invaders became so iconic, that the aliens have become a symbol for video gaming in general.
Space Invaders was ported to multiple systems and sequels and spinoffs were made, including Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV, Space Invaders DX, Space Invaders Frenzy, Space Invaders Extreme, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, Space Invaders Get Even, and the rhythm game Groove Coaster where you can use one of the aliens from Space Invaders to match the beats of a song on your controller.
Space Invaders continues to be part of the modern video game landscape, even though its form may be different from its original monochrome shooter roots, the little-pixelated invaders still find ways to delight modern video game fans.
Chris Murdock is a riddle wrapped in an enigma brought to you by patented space-age technology and electrons. He also likes video games, board games, and anime and is capable of giving off strong geek radiation burns. He also makes a mean chili and a nicely spicy Jamaican jerk chicken.