article: It may seem prehistoric nowadays, but the title, which is about to celebrate its 35th birthday, has had a huge influence on gaming and the wider world. It wasn't the first "schmup" - a term used to refer to old-school 2D-scrolling shooter titles. Missile Radar (1974) and Guided Missile (1977) preceded it. But it did manage to tap into the zeitgeist in a way that others had not. This was in large part because, the year before its release, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind had stormed the movie box office, stoking the public's appetite for all things alien. There was an element of luck that Space Invaders had an extraterrestrial theme. Tomohiro Nishikado, the game's developer, had originally wanted the game to feature battling tanks or planes. But he switched theme after Taito banned the use of human targets. "Space Invaders wasn't the result of a sudden flash of inspiration. The concept formed gradually," he tells the BBC. Gameplay is simple: move your tank along the bottom of the screen and press fire to shoot its cannon into the sky. Only one laser can be fired into space at a time, so the player must wait after each shot. Meanwhile, five rows of bomb-hurling invaders, jerking left to right and back again, advance down the screen, speeding up as they go. The player can take temporary cover from their fire under destructible bunkers and earns points by shooting the aliens. Occasional flying saucers provide bonus points if destroyed. If the aliens reach the bottom, the invasion is successful and the game ends. Defeating them starts another loop of attacks. The game was the first to save and display the best players' scores, helping encourage gamers to compete for the top spot. "Brick-breaking games were very successful at the time, and I wanted to create a shooting game in a similar style. Space Invaders was the result of a great deal of trial and error." Mr Nishikado was 34 when he designed Space Invaders' gameplay, artwork and sounds as a one-man project. He even built a customised computer to run the game. "Space Invaders, like all microcomputer-based games of the time, was heavily impacted by hardware limitations and slow processing speeds, so development was a struggle," he says. "The halting movement of the Space Invaders characters was the absolute best I could deliver, but it eventually grew on me." Space Invaders was initially limited to Japan. It took a few months for mania to ensue, but before long players were standing in line for hours to get a chance to play. Taito had trouble meeting demand for its arcade machines, and US company Midway spied an opportunity. It licensed the title and in 1979 launched cabinets featuring the game in the US to great success. The title also helped jump-start the console industry, which was in the doldrums. A glut of Pong clones - running versions of the bat-and-ball title - had swamped the market for home video games. Manufacturers had slashed prices in an effort to shift stock
summary: If you have ever played a video game, you are likely to have seen Taito's Space Invaders or one of its many derivatives.