Space Invaders

Tomohiro Nishikado spent over a year building Space Invaders for Taito in 1978 — designing not just the game but much of the hardware it ran on. The result was a phenomenon with few equals in entertainment history: arcades in Japan filled with queues, dedicated Space Invaders halls opened, and the game earned billions of coins worldwide. The story that it caused a shortage of 100-yen pieces in Japan may be embellished, but the fact people believed it tells you everything.

The design is elemental: fifty-five invaders shuffle across the screen and step down, you slide beneath them with a single cannon and four crumbling shields. Its most famous feature was an accident — as you shoot invaders, the hardware has fewer sprites to draw, so the survivors speed up. Nishikado kept the bug, and video games discovered the difficulty curve.

Space Invaders introduced ideas we now take for granted: the high score, waves that continue until you die, a hostile army with a personality. It launched the golden age of the arcade, inspired Galaxian and Galaga, and its pixel alien remains the unofficial logo of video games themselves.

The browser version linked below is a third-party remake at freeinvaders.org, made for web browsers on desktop computers — the full arcade experience, one click away, no coins required. It needs a keyboard, so it cannot be played on phones or tablets.