Four decades ago, Tomohiro Nishikado created the title that became shorthand for video games themselves. He recalls how he wanted to tap into players’ competitive instincts
The Guardian has a story on Space Invaders at 40: ‘I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon’. Space Invaders is now four decades old having been released by Taito in 1978.
Space Invaders was created by Tomohiro Nishikado, who I met when he the opening keynote for Replaying Japan 2014. He brought some of his notebooks and showed the images he drew of aliens and how he bitmapped them.
Coincidentally I also just got in the mail and started reading, the book by Florent Gorges on Nishikado, Space Invaders: Comment Tomohiro Nishikado a donné naissance au jeu vidéo japonais! (in French) The book has lots of illustrations but the print is small and hard to read. Like other books by Gorges, it is good on the history, but not that critical.