Design lessons from Space Invaders

<p>I remember the first time I saw&nbsp;<em>Space Invaders</em>.</p> <p>It was 1978, and my friend and I cycled over to a local mall, where it sat moodily aglow in the back of the dank arcade.</p> <p>We craned our necks over the crowd of teens gathered around. It was spellbinding. I&rsquo;d played a lot of arcade games before, like&nbsp;<em>Breakout</em>,&nbsp;<em>Pong</em>, or racing games like&nbsp;<em>Night Driver</em>. Those were aesthetically pretty crude affairs &mdash; the graphics mostly simple glowing blocks, the sound effects beeps and boops.</p> <p>But&nbsp;<em>Space Invaders</em>? It had&nbsp;<em>style</em>. The aliens were little masterpieces of pixel-art &mdash; extraterrestrial menace rendered vaguely cute, vaporizing into a blip when you shot one. The sound effects had the precision of plucked strings on a violin, the&nbsp;<em>pew pew pew</em>&nbsp;evoking the soundscape of&nbsp;<em>Star Wars</em>&nbsp;(recently released back then too). And best of all was the ominously looming background music, a four-toned thud-thud that radiated sinister martial vibes.</p> <p>The game felt liberating &mdash; like it had blown open the doors to show what a video game could be. The designer, Tomohiro Nishikado, seemed like a force of raw creativity.</p> <p><a href="https://clivethompson.medium.com/design-lessons-from-space-invaders-5bef75fe8f03"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>
Tags: Space Invaders