Space Invaders

Space Invaders is a fixed shooter in which the player moves a laser cannon horizontally across the bottom of the screen and fires at aliens overhead. The aliens begin as five rows of eleven that move left and right as a group, shifting downward each time they reach a screen edge. The goal is to eliminate all of the aliens by shooting them. While the player has three lives, the game ends immediately if the invaders reach the bottom of the screen. The aliens attempt to destroy the player’s cannon by firing projectiles. The laser cannon is partially protected by stationary defense bunkers which are gradually destroyed from the top by the aliens and, if the player fires when beneath one, the bottom gets destroyed.

As aliens are defeated, their movement and the game’s music both speed up. Defeating all the aliens brings another wave which starts lower, a loop which can continue endlessly. A special “mystery ship” will occasionally move across the top of the screen and award bonus points if destroyed.

Game developers including Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of the franchises Donkey Kong, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda), Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear), Satoshi Tajiri (Pokémon), and John Romero and John Carmack (both Doom) have cited Space Invaders as their introduction to video games. Miyamoto said Space Invaders had revolutionized the video game industry. According to Alexander Smith, by “allowing targets to attack the player and eliminating the timer, Nishikado created a new paradigm in video games.” It also inspired Eugene Jarvis (Defender, Robotron: 2084) to become a video game designer, stating it “laid the groundwork for a whole generation” of video games with the “animated characters, the story, this amazing crescendo of action and climax” and that many games “still rely on the multiple life, progressively difficult level paradigm” of Space Invaders. Deus Ex creator Warren Spector said: “Space Invaders and games like it represent the roots of everything we see today in gaming. It represents the birth of a new art form, one that literally changed the world. Space Invaders is important as an historical artefact, no less than the silent films of the early twentieth century or early printed books.”