kartooner.com

“In February 1978, a programmer called Toshihiro Nishikado finalized a primitive spaceship shoot’em up video game. Originally, the player had to shoot down soldiers who tried to cross the screen but, at the time, it was politically unwise to encourage killing humans, the soldiers were then replaced with an alien invasion.

Four month later, Taito, a company that sold video games since 1971, launched the first Space Invaders coin operated cabinet. The game became immediately a national passion. It was so popular in Japan that it caused a severe shortage of the 100-Yen coins needed to play the game, until the coins production was quadrupled. Beside arcades shops which featured nothing but Space Invader machines, one found Space Invaders cabinets everywhere in Japan: restaurants, ice cream and pizza shops, laundries…

In 1980, the game was licensed from Taito by Midway for production and use in the United States. The mania wasn’t quite as intense - no quarter shortage - but Space Invaders was still a phenomenal success.

The same year, it was released on the Atari 2600, making it the first ever home conversion of an arcade game. Several dozen thousands 2600 consoles were then sold only for playing Space Invaders.”

(www.old-computers.com)

Play the original and an updated version of Space Invaders (2003)
URL: http://www.robotubegames.com/inv_play.html