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Space Invaders

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Computer & Video games

   Space Invaders
   Space Invaders screenshot
   Developer(s) Taito Corporation
   Publisher(s) Midway
   Designer(s) Toshihiro Nishikado - Game Designer
   David Yuh - Programmer
   Release date(s) 1978
   Genre(s) Fixed Shooter
   Mode(s) Single player
   Platform(s) Arcade
   Input Two motion buttons, one fire button, and two start buttons
   Arcade cabinet Upright
   Arcade CPU(s) 1x Intel 8080 @ 2.000 MHz
   Arcade sound system(s) Texas Instruments SN76477
   Arcade display Monochrome raster, vertical orientation

   Space Invaders is an arcade video game designed by Toshihiro Nishikado
   in 1978. It was originally manufactured by Taito and licensed for
   production in the U.S. by the Midway division of Bally. Released (at
   first in its native Japan) in 1978, it ranks as one of the most
   influential video games ever created. Though simplistic by today's
   standards, it was one of the forerunners of modern video gaming.

Description

   Inspired by Taito's earlier electromechanical machine Space Monsters
   and and Toshiro's interpretation of alien descriptions in War of the
   Worlds, the game itself resembled an adaptation of the two. In this
   video game version of the game, the player controlled the motions of a
   movable laser cannon that moved back and forth across the bottom of the
   video screen. Rows and rows of video aliens marched back and forth
   across the screen, slowly advancing down from the top to the bottom of
   the screen. If any of the aliens successfully landed on the bottom of
   the screen the game would end. The player's laser cannon had an
   unlimited supply of ammunition to shoot at the aliens and destroy them
   before they hit the bottom of the screen.

   Meanwhile, the aliens would shoot back at the player, raining deadly
   rays and bombs that the player would have to dodge lest his cannon be
   destroyed. The player's cannon could be destroyed three times (the
   player had three lives), and the game would end after the player's last
   life was lost. Occasionally a bonus spaceship would fly across the top
   of the screen which the player could shoot for extra points.

   As the player destroyed an increasing number of aliens, the aliens
   began marching faster and faster, with the lone remaining alien zooming
   rapidly across the screen. Shooting the last alien in the formation
   rewarded the player with a new screen of aliens, which began their
   march one row lower than the previous round.

Implementation

   Mirrored holographic display and cardboard background of a Midway Space
   Invaders Deluxe arcade cabinet. Note the monitor on the bottom.
   Mirrored holographic display and cardboard background of a Midway Space
   Invaders Deluxe arcade cabinet. Note the monitor on the bottom.

   One key feature of Space Invaders was the fact that as more and more of
   the aliens were shot, the remaining aliens would move faster and
   faster. The change in speed was minor at the beginning of a wave, but
   dramatic near the end. This action was originally an unintentional
   result of the way the game was written - as the program had to move
   fewer and fewer aliens, it could update the display faster - but the
   development team decided to retain this feature rather than
   implementing busy waiting when there were few invaders on the screen.

   Space Invaders used an Intel 8080 as its processor, running at 2 MHz.
   Graphics were implemented through a 1 bpp frame buffer mapped from the
   main CPU address space. All sound effects were implemented individually
   with discrete electronics.
   The Japanese version of the Space Invaders arcade cabinet. (Note
   Joystick)
   The Japanese version of the Space Invaders arcade cabinet. (Note
   Joystick)

   In the upright version the actual output of the game was displayed
   mirror-image on a black and white monitor which sat recessed in the
   game's cabinet. The image was reflected on a plastic panel which the
   player saw. Behind the reflective panel was a lunar landscape which
   gave the game an impressive background setting. It is interesting to
   note that there were two major uprights. There was the original Taito
   upright which utilized joystick control, but most people in America are
   familiar with the Midway licensed version which used directional
   buttons and arguably had inferior artwork on its bezel, side art, and
   moon backgrounds.

   Since the actual video game console itself had a monochrome video
   image, Taito added colour by coating the reflective screen with colored
   bands. It should be noted however, that the very first version of the
   game in Japan ("T.T.", or "Table Top" Space Invaders) was a cocktail
   table with purely black and white graphics (i.e., no colour overlay).
   There was also a version of the game in which the graphics were
   converted to actual RGB colour.

   Space Invaders had no hardware for the generation of random numbers, so
   the seemingly random point values awarded by the UFO actually utilized
   a hash function based on the number of shots that the player had fired
   in the current invasion wave. It did not take long for experimenters to
   determine that the maximum 300-point value could be achieved every time
   if the player shot the wave's first UFO on the 23rd shot, and
   subsequent UFOs at 15-shot intervals thereafter. Later revisions of the
   game removed this "bug".

   Another important tactical element of the arcade game is that it is
   impossible for the players' spaceship to be harmed by an invader firing
   a missile from the lowest line on the screen before the invader lands.

Graphics design

   In October 2005, Nishikado commented in an interview with English based
   video games magazine Edge that the look of the aliens had been based on
   the description of the alien invaders in H. G. Wells' classic science
   fiction story, The War of the Worlds: "In the story, the alien looked
   like an octopus. I drew a bitmap image based on the idea. Then I
   created several other aliens that look like sea creatures such as squid
   or crab." Nishikado also noted that his original intention in designing
   a shooting game had been to make the enemies airplanes, but that this
   had been too technically difficult to render. He was opposed to
   depicting the enemies as human beings (which would have been
   technically easier) as he believed the idea of depicting the shooting
   of humans to be "morally wrong".

Legacy

Popular response

   The enormous blockbuster success of Space Invaders made the
   entertainment industry sit up and take notice. Within the first year of
   its release, the game had generated revenue ranging in the hundreds of
   millions of dollars—with the majority coming from teenagers and school
   children, who pumped millions of coins into the game at a frenzied
   pace. In Japan, Space Invaders caused a coin shortage until the Yen
   supply was quadrupled .

   Space Invaders became very popular in part due to its new style of game
   play. Up until its release, video games were timed to a clock, and once
   a player's time was up (plus possible bonus time), the game ended. With
   Space Invaders, the game ended only when the player had exhausted the
   three allotted "lives" or when the invaders landed on the bottom of the
   screen: a person could therefore play for as long as their skill level
   allowed.

Highest Score

   According to the book Stratford Video Gaming Records, 1980 Premiere
   Edition (pg. 79), at the Canadian National Exhibition, held between
   August 29 and September 2, the following are the records set in
   continuous play of the game:

   1st Place (NEW RECORD)

          Set: ERIC FURRER, MALE, AGE 12, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
          Score: 1,114,020
          Play Time: 38 Hours, 30 Minutes
          Particulars: TOTAL OF 4 BASES, 111 SCORE ROLLS (0000 - 9990)
          Pauses: (7) 15min., excluded from play time
          Prize: 500.00 DOLLARS & STRATFORD T-SHIRT AND VIDEO GAMING
          TROPHY

   2nd Place (NEW RECORD)

          Set: CORY GRAHAM, MALE, AGE 17, GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN, UNITED
          STATES
          Score: 98,390
          Play Time: 3 Hours, 12 Minutes
          Particulars: TOTAL OF 4 BASES, 9 SCORE ROLLS (0000 - 9990)
          Pauses: None
          Prize: 100.00 DOLLARS & STRATFORD T-SHIRT AND VIDEO GAMING
          TROPHY

   3rd Place (1980 RECORD)

          Set: GAIL HENSHAW, FEMALE, AGE 15, BUFFALO, NEW YORK, UNITED
          STATES
          Score: 23,710
          Play Time: 59 Minutes
          Particulars: TOTAL OF 4 BASES, 2 SCORE ROLLS (0000 - 9990)
          Pauses: None
          Prize: 50.00 DOLLARS & STRATFORD T-SHIRT

Later releases

   The home version of Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 was a huge
   success. It offered 112 different versions of the game. Variations
   included invisible invaders, invisible missiles and other subtle
   alterations. It was not the first video arcade adaptation for the Atari
   2600 system (most of the early games for the 2600 were adaptations of
   early Atari video arcade games such as Breakout, PONG, Night Driver,
   etc.), but it was the first officially licensed arcade game for home
   conversion from one company to another (in this case, Taito to Atari.)
   Other home console companies would make their own conversions of Space
   Invaders. Examples included Space Armada for the Intellivision, Alien
   Invaders — Plus! for the Odyssey 2 and TI Invaders for the TI-99/4A.
   But only Atari owned the rights to the use of the title Space Invaders.
   The console had been released in 1977, but sales of the 2600
   skyrocketed during the 1980 holiday shopping season, as millions of
   families bought the Atari system just so that they could play Space
   Invaders. This marked the beginning of home video adaptations of
   popular arcade games.

   Space Invaders spawned a large number of imitators, as other video game
   manufacturers sought to cash in on its successful formula, and released
   many arcade games featuring variations of the same theme: attacking
   aliens from outer space. One such example was a game called Pepsi
   Invaders, made by Atari at the request of Coca-Cola for their Atlanta
   employees. Taito released several sequels to Space Invaders in the
   arcades over the years:
     * Space Invaders Part II (" Space Invaders Deluxe") (1979)
     * Return of the Invaders (1985)
     * Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV (" Super Space Invaders
       '91")

   (1990)
     * Space Invaders DX (1994)
     * Akkan-vaders (" Space Invaders '95: The Attack Of The Lunar
       Loonies") (1995).

   The release of Pac-Man in 1980 broke the mold of "alien invader" games,
   and it opened the way for more creativity and originality in the video
   gaming industry. But the legacy of Space Invaders lives on, and
   action-based science fiction games continue to pay homage to the
   original shoot-em-up video game.

   Enemies based on Space Invaders also appeared in Bubble Bobble games.
   To top it off, Bubble Symphony featured both a giant Space Invader
   guarded by aliens who move just like in Space Invaders as a boss and
   cameo appearances by the player controlled spaceship as a companion for
   the main characters.

   Super Space Invaders was a Space Invaders clone for a range of systems
   including the Amiga, Master System and Super Nintendo Entertainment
   System featuring greatly upgraded graphics and sound, along with
   additions to the game play such as power-ups and advanced forms of
   aliens. Despite this, it was given average reviews at best, and sold
   very poorly.

   Space Raiders (Space Invaders: Invasion Day in Europe) was released in
   2001 and is a 3D version of space invaders. Rather than a laser at the
   bottom shooting up, the player is a human shooting forward at aliens in
   the street.

   Space Invaders, Space Invaders Part II, and Return of the Invaders were
   re-released in October 2005 as part of Taito Legends for the
   PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC. The other three arcade Invader games,
   Space Invaders DX, Super Space Invaders '91 and Space Invaders '95:
   Attack of the Lunar Loonies are scheduled for re-release in the Fall of
   2006 as part of Taito Legends 2 for the same platforms.

   In April 2007, Space Invaders Trilogy which includes arcade versions of
   Space Invaders, Space Invaders Part II, and Return of the Invaders was
   released for Pocket PC and Smartphone.

Street art

   An Invader mosaic seen in Avignon.
   An Invader mosaic seen in Avignon.

   Space Invaders has also inspired a form of street art to a French
   artist known only by the pseudonym " Invader". Using ceramic tiles,
   Invader cements together mosaic images inspired of traditional Space
   Invaders aliens, bonus spaceships, and variations on those themes,
   sometimes including characters from the Pac-Man series, Super Mario
   series, and other video games. Most of the mosaics tiles are small and
   others are as large as murals. The mosaics are cemented onto building
   walls, lamp post bases, and other structures. The form has spread
   throughout the world since the 1990s, among more than 30 cities over 5
   continents, Invader is still in activity. Some of the thousands of
   individual Invaders have been documented with photographs on Invader's
   website.

Human Space Invaders

   In 2006 at the Belluard Bollwerk International 06 festival in Fribourg,
   Switzerland, Guillaume Reymond of NOTsoNOISY created a 3 minute video
   recreation of Space Invaders using humans as pixels. This is part of a
   larger project called the "Gameover" project which also includes Human
   Pong.

Easter Egg

     * On the Atari 2600 version of this game a single player can obtain
       "double bullets" by turning the game on while holding down the game
       reset switch. After choosing single player, 2 bullets are fired for
       each press of the button. This dramatically changes the nature of
       the game and allows players to obtain a much higher score.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
