1978 · Microprocessor Arcade Game · Work 903 of 1,871
A small café in Tokyo on a hot summer evening, three low table cabinets with tops of dark glass standing side by side in place of the usual tables, beneath each glass top a screen glowing as a soft blurred green and white light, on the glass cups of green tea and neat stacks of silver coins, young office workers in white short-sleeved shirts and dark trousers on low stools, seen from directly behind, faces turned fully away, bent over the glowing glass with their hands at short levers and round buttons, cigarette smoke drifting in the glow, a counter of pale wood behind, frosted sliding windows.
What it was used for
Space Invaders was a coin-operated machine for Japanese arcades and cafés. Tomohiro Nishikado built both hardware and software himself: in the account from the book "Game Maestro" (2000), translated by shmuplations, he bought LSI chips, soldered them onto a board and programmed in assembly; the programming took 3 to 4 months, setting up the development environment beforehand about 6 months. In an interview published by Time Extension he names the processor: "There was a CPU called 8080, and that CPU came with its own assembler. I studied it by myself and then wrote the game."
What was new
The characteristic break was with wired logic: Nishikado's earlier machines were soldered circuits, and this was his first game that consisted of program code. He explicitly credits the microprocessor with the finer handling of numbers and thus with "having the speed of the invaders increase". The barb is the game's most famous number: Charles Paradis, writing in "The Numismatist" (2014), holds the legend that the machine drained Japan's supply of 100-yen coins to be a fabrication - by his figures production of 100-yen coins rose by 76.4 % in 1979 and 64.9 % in 1980, and he calls a claim published in 1980 "pure fiction".
What the sources leave open: No reliable figure for cabinets produced was found in the sources consulted; the widely repeated 100,000 is not supported here. The Time Extension interview was conducted by Ollie Barder (page dated 28 Dec 2025, comments from 14 May 2025). Paradis's mintage table (read via academia.edu, not checked against the Japan Mint) does not match his percentages: 292, 382, 588 million for 1978-1980 give about +31 % and +54 %.
Connections
Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.