I don't remember whether we got our first Atari 2600 for Christmas in 1977, the year the system first appeared in American stores. I suspect we didn't.
The Atari Video Computer System, as it was originally called, had a respectable launch, but it wasn't immediately the world-conquering phenomenon the Atari 2600 would eventually become. Atari had invested heavily in producing consoles for the Christmas market, and the home video game business was still new enough that nobody really knew whether Americans wanted another electronic box attached to their television.
Then came Space Invaders.
The original arcade game was created by Japanese designer Tomohiro Nishikado and released by Taito in 1978. Nishikado experimented with different ideas for the enemies before settling on creatures from outer space, drawing inspiration from science fiction including The War of the Worlds. He also credited Atari's Breakout as an important influence on the game's design.
Whatever combination of influences produced it, Space Invaders became a phenomenon.
By the end of 1982, billions of quarters had reportedly been fed into Space Invaders machines around the world. The rows of aliens slowly descending toward the player, speeding up as their numbers diminished, created one of the simplest and most effective forms of electronic anxiety ever invented. Everybody understood what was happening immediately: they're coming down here, you're down here, and eventually they're going to get you.
But the version I remember most wasn't standing in an arcade.
It was sitting in front of our television.
In 1980, Atari released Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. It was the first officially licensed conversion of an arcade game for a home video game console, and it became the Atari's killer app. Sales of the console exploded. People who might not have understood why they needed a dedicated video game machine suddenly had a very good reason: they could play Space Invaders without putting another quarter into a cabinet.
I'm guessing that's when the Atari arrived at our house.
The 2600 version couldn't reproduce the arcade game exactly, but that hardly mattered. Having anything resembling an arcade game available whenever you wanted to play it was astonishing. The television wasn't just something you watched anymore. You could interact with it.
And Space Invaders wasn't simply one game on the Atari. The cartridge contained an absurd number of variations—different player speeds, moving shields, invisible invaders, two-player versions and combinations of those options. Atari advertised 112 game variations, which sounded like you were buying an entire arcade on one cartridge even if most of those "games" were variations on the same basic premise.
Shoot the aliens before the aliens reach you.
Simple enough.
It's difficult now, when almost any game ever created can be downloaded or emulated in seconds, to explain how futuristic that little black cartridge seemed. The Atari joystick had one stick and one red button. The graphics were blocks. The sound effects were primitive electronic pulses.
None of that mattered.
There were aliens coming down the television screen, and you were controlling what happened next.
That was enough.
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| Atari 2600 Space Invaders |
