Started by Kaito Morimoto (@kaito_m) ·
Space Invaders speeds up because the hardware was struggling
5 sources · 21 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “why do the aliens speed up in space invaders”
- Ended at
- “space invaders 100 yen coin shortage true”
The Trail
- “why do the aliens speed up in space invaders” (google.com)
- Space Invaders (en.wikipedia.org)
- Tomohiro Nishikado (en.wikipedia.org)
designed it, built the hardware, and wrote the code. basically by himself
- Intel 8080 (en.wikipedia.org)
- “space invaders 100 yen coin shortage true” (google.com)
What I came away with
The aliens move faster as you shoot them because the processor has fewer of them to draw each frame. Nishikado liked the effect and kept it, which arguably gave us the difficulty curve. The story that it caused a 100-yen coin shortage in Japan doesn't hold up: coin collectors at the time saw nothing unusual and the mint's figures don't back it.
Keep going
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