Arcade Interlude: Space Invaders (1978)

When I started this blog, my plan was to play through every CRPG and adventure game I could find, in chronological order  by year.  I'd found myself in a rut as far as gaming was concerned, and I just wasn;t getting enough of it into my schedule.  So I decided to make it a part of my schedule, by starting a blog.  That's been working pretty well so far, and I've been enjoying it a lot.  (I should also confess that I'm completely ripping of the format of crpgaddict.blogspot.com.  Go over there to see this done better.)

Somewhere along the way, though, I decided that I might branch out a little into other genres.  If I'm playing every CRPG and adventure game in 1978, for example, I might has well hit the other major games released in that year.  So that's where the first Arcade Interlude comes in.

The plan here is not to do a whole series of posts on these sidebar games.  I certainly don't want to give them a Final Rating.  I just want to play them for a bit, do a single post acknowledging that I did so, and move on.

So rather than writing up a lengthy review, I'm going to do a short spiel on the game in question, and then provide two videos.  The first video will show my first attempt to play the game; for some games it will be my first attempt ever, and for others it will simply be the first time I've played it in a good long while.

The second video will show my final attempt at the game.  I'm going to play it solidly for an hour or so, then record the last game.  I guess it will show how good I can become in an hour.

So, Space Invaders.  It wasn't the earliest arcade game, but it may have been the first video game craze.  The game was designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released by Taito.  It's easy to see why it caught on: it's easy to play, very intuitive, and the difficulty ramps up in waves as you progress.  Indeed, by 1982 it had earned $2 billion in quarters.  So how good at it was I able to get in an hour?

My first attempt:

My final attempt:

Not very good, I'm afraid, but at least I was able to make it through an entire screen.  And I'm pretty happy that my final attempt was also my best.