STACK #137 Mar 2016

GAMES PREVIEWS

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PART 1

When Space Invaders ruled the Earth. By Paul Jones.

in the same year, it sold some 8,000 cabinets. Intrigued by the use of microprocessors in Gun Fight , Nishikado began to explore the possibility of designing a game utilising the same tech. He became addicted to Breakout , another commercial success for Atari built by Steve Wozniak and a young, ambitious man named Steve Jobs, and was inspired by the concept of levels that had to be completed in order for the game to progress. Nishikado wanted to make a shooting game with greater detailed graphics than Breakout . Combining imported US microprocessors and Japanese components, Nishikado engineered his own development tools required for the project. It was a simple but effective concept: Rows of enemies would march across the screen, descending on each pass. Players would control a firing platform positioned at the bottom of the screen, protected by destructible cover, and attempt to destroy the oncoming waves. These enemies were initially designed to be planes, but Nishikado couldn’t get the movements to look right onscreen. And an idea to use human forms was vetoed by senior management at Taito. After thumbing through a magazine detailing the rise in popularity of Star Wars , the developer made the choice to set his game in space, basing the alien design on a copy of War of the Worlds he owned in school. Working practically unassisted, the project took just over a year to complete. The limitation of the processors meant Nishikado could only render the graphics in monochrome, so the game was first fitted into a cocktail cabinet and three strips of coloured cellophane was overlaid on the screen to simulate colour. With the build completed, production commenced, and Space Invaders eventually began rolling out to arcades in limited numbers across Japan in May 1978.

I ncredibly by 1982, Space

Invaders had sold over 400,000 arcade cabinets and turned over

a phenomenal $3.8 billion in revenue across the globe. At the height of its popularity, shopkeepers, takeaway outlets, and even a purported funeral parlour had made room for the game. When it was released in 1978, its success was unprecedented, providing a much needed impetus to a stagnant video game industry. And, believe it or not, the success of Space Invaders was down to just one man. Tomohiro Nishikado attended Tokyo Denki University in the 1960s, studying electronics. As a child, he had built basic radios and valve amplifiers to play his records on. When the fledgling young electronics engineer concluded his studies, he began a short spell of employment with an audio company. However, on the advice of an old friend, Nishikado took a position with Taito Trading Company in 1969. Established in 1953, the Tokyo-based

Tomohiro Nishikado

Taito predominantly sold imported goods and was the first company in Japan to distill vodka. In 1956, Taito moved into the amusement industry, importing and producing jukeboxes and vending machines. In 1972, Atari unveiled the sports video game Pong, turning a generation on to a new form of electronic entertainment. Its influence reached Japan, and Nishikado began working on his own version of the game, developing Soccer – a derivative of Pong . Three years later, Taito licensed Western Gun , a game Nishikado himself had designed, to US company Midway, who promptly put its own engineers to work on it. It was redesigned using microprocessors, a new technology that first appeared in the US during the early ‘70s. Renamed Gun Fight and released Nishikado wanted to make a shooting game with greater detailed graphics than breakout

GAMES

Nishikado's original design sketches for Space Invaders .

To be continued...

MARCH 2016

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