Space Invaders — stories left

The developer Nishikado has said that he was "shocked" when he learned of the tactic known as the "Nagoya shot".

Younger staff, mainly in the development division, thought well of it, and Nishikado refused to change it. Nishikado gave this account in Shin Denshi Rikkoku 4 and Mirai Sozodo.

Nishikado also said that shooting people was frowned upon.

He relied on feedback from his coworkers to balance the difficulty; in retrospect, Nishikado stated that without their input he would have made the game less challenging because he struggled to play it.

While several noted the nostalgia as a major selling point, they also said that the basic gameplay was dated.

Ryan Geddes and Daemon Hatfield of IGN listed it as one of the "Top 10 Most Influential Games" in 2007, citing it as a source of inspiration to video game designers and the impact it had on the shooting genre.

Writing for The Times Online, Michael Moran ranked it the "most influential video game ever" in 2007, citing its "immensely addictive" gameplay and explosive effect on the industry's growth.

In describing it as a "seminal arcade classic", IGNs Levi Buchanan listed the game as the number eight "classic shoot 'em up" that same year. 1UP.coms Rowan Kaiser ranked it the third "Most Influential Game of All Time" in 2011, calling Space Invaders "the first video game as a video game, instead of merely a playable electronic representation of something else" like earlier arcade games.

Outside shooting games, Sega/Gremlin's 1979 Head On adopted the concept of "going round after round" in lieu of a timer after a senior developer from its parent company, Sega, had seen Space Invaders.

Tommy Tallarico, a video game composer and sound designer, cited Space Invaders as an example of how video game music is "not a passive linear medium", stating that the interaction elevates the experience to a higher level for the senses.

Writing for IGN, Levi Buchanan attributed the launch of the "arcade phenomenon" in North America in part to the title.

He described the industry scene at the time as an "incredible universe now open to video game designers", citing the hype of Space Invaders and other popular space games released around 1979.

Soon after the game's arcade release, the Japanese synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra reproduced Space Invaders sounds in its 1978 self-titled album and hit single "Computer Game"; the latter sold over 400,000 copies in the United States.

The next year, the band Funny Stuff released "Disco Space Invaders" in Japan and songwriters Russell Dunlop and Bruce Brown released "Space Invaders" in Australia as the group Player One.

The trend continued in 1980 with two more songs titled "Space Invaders"; one on the Pretenders' self-titled album and another by WGCL disc jockey Victor Blecman.

Decades later, Video Games Live performed audio from Space Invaders as part of a special retro "Classic Arcade Medley" in 2007.

The invader character was adapted into the "alien monster" emoji in version 10 of the Unicode standard in 2017.

In 1981, "Space Invaders Wrist" was documented as an ailment in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Highways England launched a safety campaign in 2018 titled "Don't be a Space Invader, Stay Safe, Stay Back"—featuring the game's logo and alien character—to raise awareness on the dangers of tailgating.

In the United Kingdom, George Foulkes proposed a Private Member's Bill in 1981 titled "Control of Space Invaders and other Electronic Games Bill" to allow local councils to restrict it and similar games via licensing for its "addictive properties" and for causing "deviancy".

The name is said to have been standardised after 1979-6, when Japan's first game strategy guide, Invader Kouryakuho: Kore de Anata mo 10000-ten Player (Herald Publishing), went on sale.

Because production could not keep up, it became the first game in Japan to be licensed to other makers.

It is said that at the height of the boom the price rose to several million yen and the machines still sold.

The game has been ported and re-released in various forms, including the 1980 Atari 2600 version, which quadrupled sales of the Atari 2600 console and became the first killer app for video game consoles.

Both Taito's and Midway's first Space Invaders releases have black-and-white graphics with strips of transparent orange and green cellophane over certain portions of the screen to add color to the image.

Taito first officially published Space Invaders for purposes of copyright in April 1978.

Taito first released an upright arcade cabinet, which it announced in August 1978.

Since only a few hundred units had been released at the time, Taito was able to apply a fix by replacing the machines' read-only memory (ROM).

The 1980 port to the Atari 2600 was the first official licensing of an arcade game for consoles and became the first killer app for home video game consoles after quadrupling the system's sales.

Space Invaders popularity propelled it to become the first game that recouped a United States arcade machine's owner within a month of purchasing; prices ranged from $2,000 to $3,000 per machine in 1982.

In 1981, the game earned weekly in arcades in the United States, second only to Pac-Man.

After selling over units its first year, the Atari 2600 port sold over copies by the end of 1981, becoming the best-selling Atari 2600 game until the 1982 Atari version of Pac-Man released.

In describing it as a "seminal arcade classic", IGNs Levi Buchanan listed the game as the number eight "classic shoot 'em up" that same year. 1UP.coms Rowan Kaiser ranked it the third "Most Influential Game of All Time" in 2011, calling Space Invaders "the first video game as a video game, instead of merely a playable electronic representation of something else" like earlier arcade games.

The first was Space Invaders Part II in 1979 featuring color graphics, an attract mode, new gameplay elements, and added an intermission between gameplay.

While several publications have credited the game for introducing the concept of saving high scores, the 1976 coin-op video game Sea Wolf implemented the feature first, though also allowed the player to reset it by pushing a button.

The game's influence extended to the development of Williams Electronics's first game, the 1981 Defender; early versions drew heavily from Space Invaders before its developer, Jarvis, took it a different direction.

Writing for GameSetWatch in 2010, Simon Carless noted a similar influence on contemporary first-person shooters like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, commenting that it and Space Invaders share core principles: take cover behind walls and shoot enemies to obtain a high score.

Initially showcased only in its chain of stores (Taito Station) starting in April 2008, the company later released the video on DVD in October 2008.

It was the biggest hit in the history of Japanese arcades. An estimated 100,000 genuine units from Taito, 100,000 from licensed makers, and 300,000 unlicensed copies were shipped. In less than 1 and a half years of the boom, 500,000 units in total were in circulation across Japan.

Sales are said to have reached about 300,000 units, and Taito's own production could not keep up.

The name is said to have been standardised after 1979-6, when Japan's first game strategy guide, Invader Kouryakuho: Kore de Anata mo 10000-ten Player (Herald Publishing), went on sale.

Takings reached 20,000 to 30,000 yen in 1 days, so the 460,000 yen cost of a cabinet could be recovered at once, and orders flooded in to Taito.

There is an urban legend that a new Taito employee's bonus at the time was 1,000,000 yen, but rewards for game developers had not been established then, and the developer Nishikado says he received only about 100,000 yen as a president's award on the podium.

The company later released the "TV JACK Supervision 8000" with the dedicated game "Missile Vader" bundled, but this time the price was set high at 59800 yen and sales were poor.

The special edition also includes 2 arcade games that Tomohiro Nishikado worked on but that are not directly related to this title: Space Cyclone and Lunar Rescue.

As the 1st title in Arcade Archives, Space Invaders was released on 2025-12-25, and Space Invaders Part 2 on 2026-1-1, on each platform.

In the Gamest Mook The Best Game (1991) the arcade version placed 40th in a Gamest reader poll covering every arcade game.

The enemies are in 14 columns, the UFO moves back and forth across the top of the screen at all times and is destroyed in 5 shots (the score rises 10 → 20 → 30 → 40 for every 1 hits, with 50 points when it is destroyed, or 200 points if destroyed on the 5th shot). This differs most of all from the Taito version.

In an interview in 2019, Nishikado said that Taito alone made 10 titles on reused Invaders boards.

As of 1979-5 it had sold 120,000 copies.

The company produced 200,000–300,000 units for the Japanese market by June 1979 and increased production to 25,000–30,000 units per month with Taito projecting to manufacture 400,000 machines in Japan before the year end.

Within a year of releasing in the United States, 60,000 units were in the country; the number of units in the United States eventually reached 72,000 by 1982.

By 1982, it had grossed $2 billion (equivalent to $ in ), with a net profit of $450 million (equivalent to $ in ).

Space Invaders earned Taito profits of over $500 million by 2008 (equivalent to $ million in ).

Soon after the game's arcade release, the Japanese synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra reproduced Space Invaders sounds in its 1978 self-titled album and hit single "Computer Game"; the latter sold over 400,000 copies in the United States.

It was the biggest hit in the history of Japanese arcades. An estimated 100,000 genuine units from Taito, 100,000 from licensed makers, and 300,000 unlicensed copies were shipped. In less than 1 and a half years of the boom, 500,000 units in total were in circulation across Japan.

At the time of development, Block Kuzushi, which brought Atari's Breakout to Japan, was popular in arcades and coffee shops.

Nishikado's colleagues praised it, applauding his achievement while queuing up to play, whereas his bosses predicted low sales as games often ended more quickly than timer-based arcade games.

After selling over units its first year, the Atari 2600 port sold over copies by the end of 1981, becoming the best-selling Atari 2600 game until the 1982 Atari version of Pac-Man released.

Reviewing the Super Nintendo Entertainment System release, Weiss praised the quality of the graphic's reproduction as well as how enjoyable the different modes are to play.

Games World magazine's four reviewers—Dave Perry, Nick Walkland, Nick Roberts, and Adrian Price—praised the release for the Game Boy handheld console.

Cheap single-cone speakers were used at first, but the sound pressure of the movement effect destroyed them, so every maintenance worker was put to work replacing them with wide-groove double-cone speakers in units already shipped.

Within the company, Blue Shark was pushed hard in sales, while Space Invaders was at first placed only in Taito's own arcades, and was expected to do no more than earn back what had been spent on it.

Taito had already developed a board to match Galaxian, but a large number of Invaders boards remained and could not reasonably be scrapped, so senior management in the sales division ordered that only the ROM on the Invaders board be swapped to make a different game.

Taito originally did not credit a designer as anonymity was a required part of Nishikado's contract with the company.

The game was originally titled Space Monsters after a popular song in Japan at the time, "Monster", but was changed to Space Invaders by the designer's superiors.

Released by Avex Trax in December 2008, the album includes six songs that were originally in the PSP version of Space Invaders Extreme.

Within the company, Blue Shark was pushed hard in sales, while Space Invaders was at first placed only in Taito's own arcades, and was expected to do no more than earn back what had been spent on it.

Takings reached 20,000 to 30,000 yen in 1 days, so the 460,000 yen cost of a cabinet could be recovered at once, and orders flooded in to Taito.

Of these, Bandai announced an Invaders game for the "TV JACK Add-on 5000" at the toy trade fair in 1979-6, but it was shelved for various reasons.

The overseas version, released in 94, 4 years after the Japanese one, supports the Super Game Boy. On startup the player can choose between a "SUPER GAME BOY" mode, given its own colours and picture frame, and an "ARCADE" mode, which is the Super Famicom version with the versus element removed; that version had not been released overseas at the time.

As an effect of the boom, a proposal that television games should also be regulated, as pachinko was under the amusement facilities tax, was submitted to the National Amusement Business Cooperative on 1979-2-16 by a director for the 3 Hokuriku prefectures.

Because Cosmic Monsters, described elsewhere, led to a lawsuit with Taito, a licence was granted to Taito as part of the settlement.

After the company won a case involving a sequel (Space Invaders Part II) in the Tokyo District Court in December 1982, Taito could pursue legal action against unauthorized reproductions.

Bally released a pinball version in 1980 with no elements of the arcade game present and the aliens resembling the xenomorphs from the film Alien; Bally was successfully sued over the resemblance to H.

He relied on feedback from his coworkers to balance the difficulty; in retrospect, Nishikado stated that without their input he would have made the game less challenging because he struggled to play it.

Despite the specially developed hardware, Nishikado was unable to program the game as he wanted—the Control Program board was not powerful enough to display the graphics in color or move the enemies faster—and considered the development of the hardware the most difficult part of the process.

The early version was not well received within the company, and bugs remained, including one that made it impossible to clear a stage partway through, so about 2 months were spent on fixes before the planned release date. The balance adjustments made then greatly improved the game.

The overseas version, released in 94, 4 years after the Japanese one, supports the Super Game Boy. On startup the player can choose between a "SUPER GAME BOY" mode, given its own colours and picture frame, and an "ARCADE" mode, which is the Super Famicom version with the versus element removed; that version had not been released overseas at the time.