In the 1970s, as Tomohiro Nishikado began to consider designing his next arcade game, the video game medium was in a fledgling state. With few rules to follow or break, the pioneering game developer had the creative freedom he needed to build a true cultural phenomenon. The game Nishikado was starting to plot out in his mind was Space Invaders, the iconic shoot ’em up that is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

“I had no idea the game would become so popular it would become a social phenomenon,” Nishikado remembers. “I was totally taken aback.”



Despite his surprise, the game designer had certainly crafted something of great cultural significance.

Space Invaders Original Flyer Photograph: Taito via the Arcade Flyer Archive



Often credited as the title that single-handedly elevated video games above their then-status as a passing fad, Space Invaders is one of the foundation stones of today’s multibillion-dollar global games industry, along with other early arcade classics like Pong, Breakout and Pac-Man. Four decades after its release, Space Invaders continues to hold sway and status; its pixelated enemy aliens are frequently used as shorthand for video games in their entirety.

Not that Nishikado was even thinking about leaving a permanent mark on popular culture. He just wanted to push what could be done with the level of interactivity in a video game. In that aim, he succeeded and then some. Sea Wolf had introduced the notion of “high scores” two years previously, but Space Invaders did a great deal to popularise the concept.

Nishikado linked points to in-game progression and introduced the concept of saving scores to the arcade cabinet. That framed score as a signifier of skill and survival, and lured players back to a given arcade cabinet to beat the tallies of others who had played before them; a convention that established competitive gaming.



“My initial intention was not to create a game that centred on scoring mechanics, but rather one where players would compete to see who could clear the most waves,” he explains. “However, making the UFO’s score a mystery led to players becoming very conscious of their score and eventually they started competing on that basis.

‘A shooting game the like of which they’d never experienced before’ … Space Invaders. Photograph: Eugene Adebari/Rex/Shutterstock

“My aim was to give players a shooting game the like of which they’d never experienced before,” says Nishikado. “I did have the notion that I was introducing a new gameplay element, as the trend had been for only the player to shoot, but here the enemies fired back. More than that though, my focus was more on beginning software development for the microcomputer I used for the game, which was a new sensation given that games had been developed on hardware up until then.”



Before Space Invaders – which did require Nishikado to build some hardware using parts ordered through the mail – games were often created by plotting out circuitry and electronic components on an arcade board. Nishikado saw another way, however, and pioneered the notion that games could be designed on a computer. His ambition wasn’t quite met by the underwhelming power of the microcomputers of the time, but in building his own development tools and customising the hardware, he set a convention for the future of the video game industry: games were now software, not hardware.

Space Invaders’ popularity and legacy, of course, means that there’s been a lot of speculation about what inspired the game’s themes. Was it the presence of the tail end of the cold war, and paranoia about invading forces? Was it a trip to see a new movie called Star Wars? Did it stand as a metaphor for the relentless demands of modern life as computing power accelerated the human experience?



“I wasn’t influenced by any social phenomenon or issues,” Nishikado says. “My aim was purely to create a game that was interesting and fun to play.”



But what about George Lucas’s iconic film, which is often credited as inspiring the game?



“It wasn’t Star Wars that led to the outer space theme,” he explains. “Initially I started with tanks, then tried warships and warplanes – but the movement and animation didn’t match the game. After much trial and error, by far the best match were soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon. It was at this time, while I was stuck for an alternative, I chanced upon Star Wars and realised I could use aliens because no one would complain about shooting them. For the actual design of the aliens, I took inspiration from HG Wells’s octopus-like Martian design.”

Competitive instinct … Space Invaders. Photograph: Alamy



Forty years on, Nishikado admits he doesn’t find time to play many games. But he can’t quite stop dreaming them up. “I still think about how I could use some new technology or other and create an interesting game, so you could say that games are still part of my life,” he says.

As well as spawning several dozen rereleases, remasters and sequels, Space Invaders has had a huge influence over video games. In the late 1970s and 80s, countless arcade companies rushed to release contenders for the game’s crown. Space Invaders stirred something in a whole generation of future game development superstars: Mario and Zelda Creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Metal Gear maestro Hideo Kojima and first-person shooter pioneers John Romero and John Carmack all credit it with setting them on the path to becoming game designers.

Space Invaders was one of the first games to become a popular phenomenon, as Pokémon Go and Fortnite have become in more recent years. It stands up as an example of compelling game design, and a cabinet resides in MoMA’s permanent collection in Manhattan. It’s an ongoing entity for its publisher, Taito: a version called Space Invaders Extreme was recently ported to Steam in a nod to the 40th anniversary of the original. But Nishikado’s original arcade cabinet remains the locus of its cultural impact.