A Space Invaders Retrospective

The arcade classic that was out of this world

The world of arcade games exploded in 1978 with a new game from Japan: Space Invaders!

Distributed by Taito and created by Tomohiro Nishikado, it was released in Japan in 1978. Space Invaders is considered one of the most important video games ever made and ushered in the golden age of video arcade games.

Background

In its initial Japanese launch Space Invaders did not see immediate success, but by the end of the year (1978) over 100,000 arcade machines had been sold. This set the stage for its overseas debut. To help with demand, Taito licensed the overseas rights of Space Invaders to Midway. I could not find an exact date, but it seems that Space Invaders first appeared in North America in late 1978 or early 1979.

I like that it appears that creator Nishikado took the space theme from the animated series Space Battleship Yamato, which I fondly remember watching as a kid under the name Star Blazers here in the US.

In some ways, Space Invaders is a remix of Breakout, but instead of bouncing a ball to destroy a wall of bricks you are shooting down a wall of aliens (although the aliens do shoot back, unlike the bricks). Since Breakout is itself a remix of Pong, you could say that Space Invaders is akin to Space Pong!

Perhaps because of its humble origins, the beauty of Space Invaders lies in its simplicity. You control a ship at the bottom of the screen and can only slide it left and right and fire one missile at a time up at the aliens.

The alien armada is imposing with their grid organization and creepy, animated shapes. The marching sound as they take a step moving from one side of the screen, then down and then to other side is ominous and gets more hurried as you destroy ships.

Like most video games of that time, Space Invaders is a futile game. You will always lose and the aliens will always win. But how long can you last? That is the challenge!

I was recently at Funspot in New Hampshire and got to play an original version of arcade Space Invaders!

Here’s a close-up of the game screen:

Arcade Space Invaders

The arcade version of Space Invaders does not have much color. The alien invaders themselves are just white. The shield Barries and your ship are green. And that’s it for colors, just the two.

The arcade version has a grid of 55 aliens for you to destroy before they reach the bottom of the screen. If they do reach the bottom, it’s game over no matter how many ships you might have left.

If you do manage to clear the screen, then you are awarded with another screen of aliens that are moving a little faster, shooting a bit more and starting closer to the ground. Your shield barriers are also restored, however the aliens will eventually start so low that you won’t even have shield barriers to protect you.

In the US there was also Space Invaders II, a cocktail table version of the game with a competitive two-player mode.

Some Space Invaders games I recently played at FunSpot in New Hampshire

Space Invaders also kicked off a series of derivative games, and probably the entire shoot ‘em up (SHMUP) genre, including games such as Galaga, Galaxian, Defender, Xevious and much, much more.

These days I still regularly enjoy playing Galaga Wars+ on my iPhone!

Home Ports

Space Invaders has to be one of the most widely ported game ever. Again, I’d say this is due to its simplicity. But not all ports were the same and many changed the look and gameplay. For starers, the original arcade game’s screen was in portrait mode but any home ports would play on a TV screen (or computer monitor) which were a little more landscape. This usually required the layout and number of invaders to change.

Home systems of the time did not often have the ability to display as many sprites on the screen as Space Invaders requires, so tricks had to be employed. I suspect many used character graphics for the alien ships, with sprites for other moving objects.

Here are a look at some of Space Invader ports, many of which were not actually licensed:

Apple Invader aka Super Invaders from Creative Computing

Creative Computing Software published a Super Invaders for the Apple II in 1979. Not much color in this one!

TI Invaders (not an official port)

Space Invaders for the Atari 800

A C64 version of Space Invaders

VIC Invaders for the VIC-20

Space Invaders (2020) on Sinclair ZX81

You often hear these days about Doom being ported to everything, but before that Space Invaders was the game that was ported to everything. There were handheld games that played Space Invaders on LED screens and even watches that could play Space Invaders on their tiny LCD screens!

With all that said, I’ve save the first and best port for last, the one for the Atari VCS (2600).

Atari VCS Port

The Atari VCS was introduced in 1977 and by 1978 it was selling fine, but not great. It certainly was not the breakout success that it is remembered as.

That changed with Space Invaders. Atari programmer Rick Maurer saw Space Invaders in the arcade and had started working on a port (on his own time) in 1979. It initially did not garner much interest within the company until somehow Atari CEO Ray Kasser saw the game. After realizing that Space Invaders was insanely popular in the arcade he decided to license the rights to the Atari VCS version. This ended up being the first official licensing of an arcade game to a console and set the stage for many future Atari VCS games.

Atari VCS Space Invader Cartridges

The Atari VCS version was released in March 1980 and immediately was a hit, selling over 1 million copies in its first year¹. It alone made the Atari VCS a huge smash and turned Atari into one of the fastest growing companies ever.

Space Invaders on the Atari VCS (2600)

The box for Space Invaders touts “112 video games”, but those were just game variations. You could enable such things as moving shield barriers, zigzagging alien missiles, faster alien missiles and invisible invaders, among other things. Combining those in various ways would multiply out to 112 game variations, although I doubt people played most of them.

This was a common thing that most Atari-made VCS games did as a way to make them more appealing. In the later years of the VCS, most games did not bother with this nearly as much.

Without the little table in the manual describing these variations, it was difficult to know what version of the game you’d be playing if you just changed the game number with the “Select” switch.

Download a PDF of the game manual to read more about Space Invaders for the VCS.

Space Invaders 1978 Atari

1.04MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

On GitHub, Julio-Rats is creating their own version of VCS Space Invaders in assembly language. Here’s a snippet of some of the code:

 MoveSpritesAliens:
    LDA FRAME_COUNT
    AND ALIENS_SPEED
    CMP ALIENS_MASK
    BEQ SetOut
    STA ALIENS_MASK
;   Sprite Move
    LDA DIRECTION_AL
    BNE AliensMoveForward
;   AliensMoveBackward
    LDA ALIENS_POS
    CLC
    ADC #1
    CMP RIGHT_LIMIT_AL
    BPL ReverseDirection
    STA ALIENS_POS
    JMP PosMove
AliensMoveForward:
    LDA ALIENS_POS
    SEC
    SBC #1
    CMP #LEFT_LIMIT_AL
    BCC ReverseDirection
    STA ALIENS_POS

I also decided it would be fun to create my own version of Atari VCS Space Invaders, but as a desktop game for Mac, Windows and Linux. Here you can see my efforts so far:

Invaders for Mac, Windows and Linux

After the break, paid members will get to read about how I created my Atari VCS / 2600 Space Invaders replica game.