Retronomicon 12.30.09: Space Invaders

Posted by Lee Price on 12.30.2009

The Retronomicon journeys all the way back to the dawn of gaming this week as it climbs into a tank and prepares to take on the alien hordes. Step inside as this week 411's Lee Price takes a look at one of the most infamous games of all time, Space Invaders.

Hello to all of you beautiful people, this is the Retronomicon and, as ever, I am your host Lee Price here in my imaginary DeLorean, ready to take you into the past. I hope you all had an awesome Christmas and I'll be very disappointed if you aren't preparing to get shit-faced (or at least watch fireworks) this New Year's Eve. Christmas was a lot of fun for me, plenty of good food and good family. Not a single gaming related gift however. Quite distressing. Still nevermind, I guess I'll just have to shell out for some games out of my own pocket for a change. As you can imagine, I haven't gotten a whole lot of gaming done this week, just still slowly plugging away at Final Fantasy VI (still!) and a quick blast on Mario Kart Wii with the family. Anyway, I'm going to stop blabbing because it is time for the...





Comments

Only a couple of comments for Comix Zone last week. I told you it was a cult classic. More of you should be playing this game damn it. Its not like it is hard to get a hold of these days. Anyway first up is Highscore Kid with a simple sentiment;

Always loved this game.

Ah if only I could just make every Retronomicon entry like that this would be the easiest job in the world. Alas I have to put in effort, which is rarely a good thing when the reward doesn't involve alcohol, chocolate or women.

Next up is kk;

Comix Zone! - I played the shareware version from a CD. Thanks for the retro -review which gave me a name for the game of my memories or I would have sworn I must have dreamed it all up! :)

No problemo, this is exactly the sort of service I'm looking to provide. I'm glad the Retronomicon could help you identify a favorite from gaming gone past, you best have picked it up on Wii or 360!

Last but not least is Relayer71;

Very original game, nice choice for a retrospective!

Also, note that Sega used a comic book look for the cut-scenes in Phantasy Star IV, and to GREAT effect.

As ashamed as I am to admit it, I have yet to play a Phantasy Star game properly. It may have something to do with original copies going for astronomical prices these days, but there's plenty of other ways I could have played them. Same goes for the Shining Force series too. I believe I need to remedy this situation at some point.

Okay enough with all the chitter chatter because its time to strap on those rose-tinted specs as this week the Retronomicon goes all the way back to look at Space Invaders.



The Background

Wow, I could make this the shortest background info section in the history of the Retronomicon. I could just say that Pong was pretty much the only game before Space Invaders came along that anybody gave a crap about, and I would be right too. Pac-Man and Mario didn't come along until a few years later so the only game that could really claim to be of massive importance before Space Invaders is Pong.

This would do the game an injustice however, so I won't do that. Instead lets take a look at the game's creator, Tomohiro Nishikado. An engineering graduate from the Tokyo Denki University, Nishikado joined Taito in 1969, developing a couple of mechanical games before moving on to computerized ones.

His first effort was also Japan's first locally produced computer game. "Soccer" was essentially a Pong clone and was released to the public in 1972. In the following six years Nishikado went on to develop 10 more titles before striking gold with the game that would be associated with him forever afterward.

Taito, on the other hand, had a very similar start up story to the mighty SEGA. The brainchild of a Russian businessman named Michael Kogan, Taito initially started out distributing vending machines and leasing out jukeboxes before graduating to making and selling their own, along with pinball machines.

The company was making a decent name for itself and was also one of the first to invest in this new fangled computer gaming market way back in 1972. The young engineer Nishikado would, under their banner, create what is arguably the most famous game of all time, Space Invaders.



The Game

I can guarantee this is going to be the shortest review in Retronomicon history. How do you write upwards of a thousand words on a game that has so very little going on? The simple answer is you can't. Space Invaders is so supremely simple, even by standards set a mere 5-10 years after its release, that it would be impossible to go in-depth on a game whose basic premise is shoot aliens, avoid their bullets, complete the level then do it all again but faster until you die. But lets give it a shot anyway.

Space Invaders puts you in the seat of a tank. We can only assume the tank is top of the range as you are using it to fight off a horde of aliens. Either that or, judging by its limited range of moving side to side and shooting, aliens are such a common problem in the Space Invaders universe that one tank can be deployed to take out hordes while the locals figure out how to get their old PC's to show accurate looking pixellated boobs.

You are welcome to make up your own story, because there isn't one. All you know is that there are aliens. They are bad. You must kill them and you have a tank and some weird floating rocks to help you. So its kind of like Halo, sans the floating rocks. Then again perhaps not, perhaps the fact that narrative in gaming wasn't even established for years after Space Invaders' creation makes this entire paragraph pointless, so lets move on to the game itself.

Space Invaders is simple. There is no other word for it. Put this game in the hands of anybody, and within seconds they know what they need to do. Thus it is instantly more accessible than 99% of games out there today, even the casual shovelware released by t he bucket load on the Wii.

As mentioned you take control of a tank that can move side to side and fire single bullets straight upwards. You want to fire bullets upwards because above you there are rows of aliens, slowly making their descent towards you in a way that could only have been inspired by crabs or typewriters. Slowly moving to one side, dropping down a little then moving in the opposite direction, the Invaders are the masters of slowly building a suspense filled attack. Or perhaps they are tactically limited by their primitive A.I.

One way or the other they know they want to kill you, so to counter you barrage of tank bullets, they fire off missiles of their own, presumably directly from their own arses if the game is to be believed. This provides the real challenge to the player, as they must not only time their shots to hit the moving Invaders, a task made more difficult as their numbers whittle away, but they must also be sure to avoid the projectiles shot at them by the Invaders, giving the game a level of depth that hadn't been seen in the entire history of gaming up to that point.



To help you in your battle, Earth's Commanders (well I assume you're fighting for Earth) have asked David Copperfield to levitate some boulders above your tank. These floating bricks are very useful for absorbing Invader fire and hiding behind. Beware though because as they take more hits, the boulders slowly erode until there is nothing left, leaving you staring some horrible floating squid-crab right in the eye.

And that's about it. As you battle the alien hordes you get the occasional visit from a flying saucer that, when shot, yields mega bonus points. And that is really the whole point of the game. This is from the era that had no narrative, no sub-plots or mini-games. There is only one objective. Rack up as many points as you can before you are overwhelmed by the Invaders. And you will eventually get overwhelmed because as you complete each level the Invaders simply replenish, only this time they are a little faster and fire a little more frequently. Bit by bit the game gets harder until you need to reactions of a cat on speed to defeat the hordes. And this incremental difficulty continues for the entire game's lifespan of forever. That's right, if you're good enough you could play Space Invaders for all eternity as there is no end to the game. This is gaming at its most basic and pure.

Graphically, the game is essentially a bunch of pixels. Still it was pretty much the best available on the hardware at the time, as evidenced by the fact that Nishikado originally wanted to use airplanes as the enemies of the player, before realizing they would be much to difficult to render with the very limited graphical power available at the time. He wouldn't use humans as he believed shooting them was immoral. Thus, with a little inspiration from Star Wars and The War of the Worlds, Nishikado decided that space creatures should be the enemy of choice.

Still everything functions as it should. The tank kind of looks like a tank, and the boulders don't need to be anything by big shapes that are in the way. The invaders are actually surprisingly detailed, taking on the forms of crabs and squids and not looking as bad as it could have looked. Of course the graphics did give rise to pretty much the most iconic symbol in gaming so it would be a bit unfair to moan about them.

There is very, very little in the way of sound. Pretty much the only thing you hear are a couple of sound effects for the shots made and a heartbeat sound as the Invaders move. This of course gets faster as the aliens move faster, which in turn helps ramp up tension when you're a few levels in with no boulders in the way and a fast moving group of Invaders making their way towards you. Tension is generally increased by the less is more approach, so you could say in some respects that having limited sound had a beneficial effect on the game, helping to create an illusion of danger as you got further into the infinite loop of levels.

So all in all. Space Invaders will forever stand as one of, if not the most, important games ever released. While stark and supremely simple by today's, or even yesterday's standards, Space Invaders could quite literally claim to be the game that really pushed gaming into the public consciousness.



The Aftermath

Now this should be interesting. First things first the figures. As of 2007, Space Invaders had earned Taito a whopping $500 million in revenue. That, my friends, is a Guinness World Record for arcade games. No other arcade game has sparked as much interest from the consumer as one of the very first to even spark public interest.

Taito produced over 100,000 Space Invaders cabinets for the Japanese market within the first five years of its release, with another 60,000 going to the US market. The game is rumored to have caused both a yen and quarter shortage in these countries due to its rampant levels of popularity.

The game also became the first arcade game to get a licensed port to a home console when the Atari 2600 version was released in 1980. The release of this game quadrupled sales of the console almost immediately, as players flocked to get the most popular game in the world into their homes. This of course made Atari a pretty packet as well as Taito, helping the company to stamp its dominance in the gaming market before the crash in 1983.

The game has been ported and remade for just about every console under the sun, with even WiiWare getting in on the act with the tongue in cheek "Space Invaders Get Even", a game where you control the titular characters rather than the tank. Despite all the graphical updates and bells and whistles though, Space Invaders' supreme simplicity shines through on any version of the game that you could think to make. It is nearly impossible to get the formula wrong without completely changing the whole thing.

So it was marginally popular, with sales just about managing to eclipse everything that came before and most of the things that came after. But that isn't the only effect the game had. If it wasn't for Space Invaders, there would be no Mario. That's right, Shigeru Miyamoto may never have even gotten into game design if Space Invaders hadn't interested him. This game has influence so wide reaching that it would be impossible to list them all. Any game that has you shooting aliens to defend your home, which is pretty much everything released these days, has this game to thanks. Nintendo has this game to thank. Gaming itself has this game to thank.

Even the Invaders got famous. The Tank may be the hero but the Invader went on to become perhaps the most iconic image in gaming. Think of all the shirts you have seen with the famous image. Hell people have arranged it using lights from skyscrapers and it has become to go to picture when somebody needs an image to evoke gaming. Because the first thing you think when you see the iconic Space Invader is "Computer Games" and without this game it is entirely possible that gaming would never have gained the immense popularity that it has today.

The Final Word

This is the most important computer game ever released. More so than Pong, Pac-Man, Mario, Sonic, GTA or anything else you care to mention. Space Invaders is gaming.

The Price is Right

There is no chance in hell that I am searching out every single version of this game that has ever been released. It just isn't happening. What I will do is list the important version, the arcade cabinet and the most easily obtainable versions. I could fill an entire column with this list if I try to make the definitive Space Invaders price guide. Of course you could probably pick up the game, or a decent clone of it, for free quite easily too.

UK

Atari 2600 - Approx £5.
SNES - Approx £5.
NES - £8 – 10.
PS1 - £5 – 10.
Virtual Console (SNES Version) - 800 Points.
XBLA (Space Invaders Extreme) - 800 Points.

US

Atari 2600 - Approx $5.
SNES - Approx $5.
NES (JAP Import) - $15 – 20.
PS1 - $5 – 10.
Virtual Console (SNES Version) - 800 Points.
XBLA (Space Invaders Extreme) - 800 Points.

Now for the cabinets. You can get the cocktail cabinet right HERE for about £1500/$2400.

Or a stand up cabinet right HERE for £1450/$2300.

The Guy Who Can do it Better Than You

If I have one aim in life, it is to do this;



Enjoy and I hope everybody has a great New Year. Try and stay reasonably healthy.