{"id":6866,"date":"2018-06-04T18:44:14","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T18:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=6866"},"modified":"2018-06-04T18:44:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T18:44:14","slug":"space-invaders-at-40-i-tried-soldiers-but-shooting-people-was-frowned-upon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=6866","title":{"rendered":"Space Invaders at 40: &#8216;I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Four decades ago, Tomohiro Nishikado created the title that became shorthand for video games themselves. He recalls how he wanted to tap into players\u2019 competitive instincts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Guardian has a story on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/games\/2018\/jun\/04\/space-invaders-at-40-tomohiro-nishikado-interview\">Space Invaders at 40: &#8216;I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon&#8217;<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Space_Invaders\">Space Invaders<\/a> is now four decades old having been released by Taito in 1978.<\/p>\n<p>Space Invaders was created by Tomohiro Nishikado, who I met when he the <a href=\"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=5439\">opening keynote for Replaying Japan 2014<\/a>. He brought some of his notebooks and showed the images he drew of aliens and how he bitmapped them.<\/p>\n<p>Coincidentally I also just got in the mail and started reading, the book by Florent Gorges on Nishikado, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.ca\/Space-Invaders-Tomohiro-Nishikado-naissance\/dp\/2919603310\/\">Space Invaders: Comment Tomohiro Nishikado a donn\u00e9 naissance au jeu vid\u00e9o japonais! <\/a>(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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four decades ago, Tomohiro Nishikado created the title that became shorthand for video games themselves. He recalls how he wanted to tap into players\u2019 competitive instincts The Guardian has a story on Space Invaders at 40: &#8216;I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon&#8217;. Space Invaders is now four decades old having been released &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=6866\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Space Invaders at 40: &#8216;I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon&#8217;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6867,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6866\/revisions\/6867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}