1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF DECEMBER 17 | THE ESSENTIAL 100, PART FOUR

The Essential 100, No. 18: Space Invaders

Cover Story: A true zeitgeist, Space Invaders defined the medium forever.

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here exist multiple moments in video game history that people attribute as the beginning of the industry. You have the first stirrings of games with images and sound on a screen with Willie Higinbotham's oscilloscope and Ralph Baer's Odyssey, the rise of Atari, the advent of PC gaming, and the NES bringing console games back from the brink of the game crash. But the soul of games is in their power to represent anything your imagination can come up with, the communities that spring up around them, and the malleable nature of any given gameplay formula. Though you can argue which point in history ushered in each of these merits, Space Invaders brought them all to the table in one fell swoop, signaling a major sea change in the medium.

Space Invaders didn't create arcade games, but it helped make them omnipresent for a time. Released in 1978, it swept Japan, causing a legendary shortage of the 100-yen coins that powered them. It wasn't long before it also spread to other countries in a similar fashion. Though arcades existed, Space Invaders firmly established them as a cultural institution. This marked the beginning of a golden age of arcades, inspiring progressively more complex games designed to take people's quarters (or 100-yen pieces) while providing them with fun experiences they'll want to keep coming back to. The game also influenced the console space, as the Atari 2600 port single-handedly drove sales of the system, making it one of the first true system sellers. It spoke to a wide swath of people, from adolescent kids to middle-aged salarymen. This moment proved that video games could truly speak to everyone.

Part of the appeal of this particular game lies in both its graphics and concept. Up until that point, arcade games approximated real-world concepts like racing, hunting, or sports because developers were still grappling with this new medium, so using proven concepts as the theme of their games helped them nail down the craft of completing a functional game. But Tomohiro Nishikado, Taito designer and creator of Space Invaders, looked towards science fiction for inspiration. He made a game about shooting objects, but the objects are a varied race of squid-like space aliens rather than animals or bricks. Each different type of enemy looks distinct, and one, the UFO, even behaved differently by periodically flying along the top of the screen and giving bonus points when shot. The player's ship is already strategically positioned behind a set of oddly-shaped planetoids, giving it temporary cover from enemy fire that degenerates as it's shot -- even by your lasers. None of these mechanics are meant to simulate a real-world construct, but instead create internal logic unique to the game. And when you compare it to the sea of aspiring simulations on the market, it's not hard to see why people took notice. Suddenly, the representational power of video games became clear.

The pure iconography of Space Invaders cannot be denied.

The pure iconography of Space Invaders cannot be denied. The invaders themselves are often used to represent video games as a whole, even becoming a mascot of sorts for Electronic Gaming Monthly and 1UP at one point, appearing at the end of articles. But the game's notoriety extends far beyond the cute graphics. People who didn't play games on a regular basis could identify it solely by its sound effects at the height of its popularity, and the mechanics became so entrenched into popular culture that even seemingly obscure strategies like shooting through your own wall to maximize cover while you fire is now widespread legend. When your game is getting recognized for elements beyond the visuals, you know you've made something that truly connects with people.

More than just a famous game, it also created a great deal of the gamer culture we see today. Its release popularized arcades, ushering it an era where people gathered with their spare change to try and top each other's high scores or just have a fun day playing video games with others. The social aspect of the arcade meant people constantly talked to each other about the games they were playing, trading stories of exploits, strategies, or even tall tales of mythical secret content that never existed in the first place. The legendary "shoot through the shield" trick likely propagated through word of mouth thanks to arcade culture. And even though this golden era was short-lived, the shared experience of Space Invaders bled into the console space as well thanks to the unprecedented popularity of its Atari 2600 port. Game enthusiasts converged onto a single game in a short period of time and even bought the system just to experience it, something the medium never saw before. People suddenly had a game in common with a giant chunk of all 2600 owners, allowing everyone to come together and recount their experiences, which unwittingly formed loose communities in the process. Though this still was a relatively small number in the long run, it marked the beginning of an ever-increasing trend of games bringing people together.

It became so ubiquitous, in fact, that other companies started making their own Space Invaders clones, making little gameplay tweaks and improving on the formula little by little. Namco's Galaxian, perhaps the most notable game designed to directly compete with it, took the same template and added enemies that actually broke formation and dive bombed your ship, creating more unpredictability. Each subsequent release attempted to top the last, leading to the creation and evolution of the shoot-em-up genre. Space Invaders was hardly the first game that involved shooting things. Taito themselves previously created Gun Fight, which involved cowboys having shootouts. But Space Invaders gave the genre the shape that it would finally take even today.

This evolution even applied to itself, as subsequent versions of the game showed how the same basic formula could be altered to produce completely different results. Many simply updated the game to reflect changing technology, producing more detailed sprites and more colors. Official sequels used the original game as a base and throws interesting twists into the mix, like Space Invaders Extreme's use of power-ups and psychedelia or Space Invaders Infinity Gene's deconstruction of a vertical shoot-em-up seen through the lens of many of the original game's touchstones. The idea that you can tinker with a set template and end up with a vastly different experience isn't exclusive to video games, but it exemplifies the idea in the most immediate, noticeable way. Just as Space Invaders proved that games can be crafted from people's imaginations, subsequent releases showed how flexible the medium can be even within the strict confines of an established base idea.

The games on this list hold a great deal of clout with gamers for creating the threads that made modern gaming what it is today, but few truly transcend the medium the way Space Invaders does. Its sheer reach envelops the world even as its popularity finally descended from its dizzying heights. For many, Space Invaders was games, almost serving as both herald and ambassador for the audiovisual, interactive onslaught on the horizon. Perhaps because of this, it defined games as we know them today, setting the stage for the entire industry and inspiring countless developers to continue to bring their imaginations to life.

Jeremy Signor

Jeremy Signor still wonders what the heck the big furry thing on the Space Invaders cabinet is supposed to be.