STACK #138 Apr 2016

GAMES PREVIEWS

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PART 2

When Space Invaders ruled the Earth.

By Paul Jones.

The enthusiasm for the game wasn’t confined to Japan. Across the other side of the world, American company Midway were quick to pick up on the interest when Taito struggled to fill orders and licensed the game for distribution; in 1979 alone, Midway moved over 60,000 cabinets. A proliferation of arcades were swiftly The enthusiasm for the game wasn't confined to Japan... in 1979 alone, American company Midway moved over 60,000 cabinets.

T omohiro Nishikado remained confident that he had created a title that would appeal to arcade players and equally, provide Taito with a strong commercial opportunity. His colleagues shared his optimism after playing the game, although management had reservations, and these were accentuated when a test panel of arcade operators submitted negative reviews. However, several arcades agreed to take Space Invaders , and gradually, as word of mouth spread, momentum began to build. Within months there was unprecedented demand for the game, with arcades across

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worldwide success, earning Taito a net profit of over $500 million. It remains Taito’s best selling game and continues its profitability through a thriving licensing business. A plethora of titles influenced by the game’s design followed in its wake. The concept of a difficulty curve and level progression was completely revolutionary. Industry luminaries such as Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima cite Space Invaders as the game that turned them onto the industry. After the initial success, Tomohiro Nishikado continued to design games for Taito before leaving in 1996 to start his own video game company, Dreams. He stayed at the company until 2013 before returning to Taito, where he currently serves as a technical advisor. But the impact of the iconic game he built autonomously remains as relevant today as it did in the smoke-filled arcades around the world 38 years ago.

Japan requesting units. Taito began to produce a stand up cabinet version complete with the painted lunar backdrop and the now iconic external artwork. The sudden popularity of Space Invaders – aided in part by a renewed interest in aliens driven by Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind – took Taito by surprise. Reports of long queues forming outside arcades as gamers patiently waited for a turn began filtering back to the Japanese company. Stories (denied by Nishikado) that the country had to produce more 100 Yen coins to compensate for the amount of money that was being deposited in machines were circulated by the media. Puzzlingly, Nishikado was forbidden by Taito from revealing his identity as the creator of Space Invaders , leaving the games designer in complete anonymity while the game was making headline news and earning a tidy profit for his employer. By the end of 1978, Taito had sold over 100,000 machines in Japan, turning over $600 million dollars of business.

opened to cater for the demand, and shop owners frantically cleared space to install a cabinet. Space Invaders retailed for $2,000 in 1979 (around $6,000 today), but it could be paid off in less than a month of operation. Similar interest in the game was registered in Europe, with some news outlets in the UK running stories on how the arcade game was causing children to commit crimes to facilitate their addiction. In 1980, Atari became the first company to secure the licensing rights to an arcade game, and Space Invaders was ported to the Atari VCS. The move proved to be a defibrillator for the floundering console market, and the Atari subsequently sold

The End.

two million units in 12 months. By 1982, Space Invaders was a

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