Toshihiro Nishikado, who claims he came up with the idea for the game from a
dream, designed "Space Invaders." In Nishikado's dream, it is Christmas Eve
and a group of Japanese school children are looking for Santa when rows of
aliens from Venus suddenly appear. What do the aliens want? They want to
destroy the Earth, of course. As aliens move back and forth across the sky,
the kids quickly create a laser blaster with a hubcap, spark plugs and a car
battery. They carry their laser blaster back and forth, helping the children
save Earth. Nishikado quickly programmed the game for Taito. Taito
originally released "Space Invaders" in 1978. In 1980 "Space Invaders" came
to America and could be found in arcades on the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo
Entertainment System. Since then, "Space Invaders" has been adapted for many
other platforms.
The concept in "Space Invaders" is similar to Nishikado's dream, because the
player must move back and forth across the screen and shoot down all the
aliens before they reach the bottom. The aliens start out with five rows,
which is almost the length of the screen. They move back and forth, and as
time progresses they get faster and faster and move slowly down the screen.
The space ships will shoot at you, but there are a couple spots you can take
cover. However, the aliens are able to destroy your protection. To give your
score boosts, occasionally a flying saucer will fly across the screen. If
you shoot it down, you get bonus points from 50 to 525. Most versions of
"Space Invaders" are for a single player, but there are a few two-person
games. In a two-person game, the object is not only kill all the aliens but
also kill the other player too. The catch is if you kill the other player
too early you could be left with twice the amount of aliens to kill since
you have to clear their screen as well as your screen. If you cannot kill
all of the other player's aliens, then the other player can take one of your
lives. "Space Invaders" is a very simple idea, yet the game play is very
addictive.
I love this game. When I was a child, my father and I would always play it
together; he would steer and I would shoot. Since then I have tried playing
the game on my own and found it to be a lot harder than I remembered, but it
is still a lot of fun. You can still find "Space Invaders" in some arcades
or get a used copy of the game for your home system. You can even play it
online. There are many freeware versions of "Space Invaders" online. My
favorite online version was designed by James Eibisch and can be downloaded
here!
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