Released in June 1978.
Interesting facts about Space Invaders
-By the end of 1982, Space Invaders had made $2 billion in gross sales, equal to over $5 billion at the time of this writing (August 2018). Space Invaders was the best selling game of its time, and would be for years to come.
-Regarded as the first “Killer App,” a piece of software that has become so desirable or necessary that is proven to be a core piece of a greater technology. This in regards to the Atari 2600 port of the game is considered to have solely quadruple the 2600’s sales.
-As you shoot aliens, they begin to move faster towards the bottom of the screen. This is actually due to the original hardware that was used to develop the game. As fewer aliens appeared, the physical hardware was able to render them more easily and that threw off the clock the game was set to. However, the developer liked that “natural” increase in difficulty so he didn’t change it.
-Being developed in black and white, colored plastic cellophane would be used to make the game appear to have colored sections.
-Large humanoid monsters on the cabinet are actually inaccurate representations from the artist basing the art idea off of the game’s original title of Space Monsters before the developer decided to attach it to a space theme.
-The game was so popular in Japan that new arcades would open up with nothing but Space Invaders cabinets.
-Taito installed over 100,000 in Japan alone by the end of 1978 – roughly 6 months after the initial release.
-Many comparisons were drawn to the success of Space Invaders to that of Star Wars, however, Space Invaders would gross over 4x what Star Wars made in theaters.
-Space Invaders was also the first official licensing of an arcade game to be ported to a home console – the Atari 2600. It was also the first console to sell 1 million cartridges.
NewGame+ Content:
Gameplay by Old Classic Retro Gaming
You can view more video game anniversaries by heading over to our “Entries of the Den” page!
