Half-Century Challenge Series: https://www.backloggd.com/u/C_F/list/half-century-challenge/

HCC #9 = Space Invaders (1978)

Welcome back to the Half-Century Challenge. Mega just uploaded a review of Gee Bee, so be sure to give that a look: https://www.backloggd.com/u/MegaTheRealOne/review/1735351/

Anyway, my main challenge with the HCC so far has been actually sitting down and playing each game, which is not the most straightforward thing in the world with some that have a million versions or a bunch of emulation options. However, writing about games like Gun Fight or Wander has been overall easy since I don't feel intimidated writing about games, generally.

But, genuinely how in the fuck do I write about Space Invaders? This and Pac-Man are the two most documented pieces of fiction ever, the highest grossing media products period when adjusting for inflation.

So, I'm not going to write about Space Invaders itself. You know what Space Invaders is. I know what Space Invaders is. We both know how it plays. I, instead, offer my perspective on how and why I came to view it as a cornerstone of the industry.

Every year, more and more arcades close down. More and more arcade cabinets break down as maintenance is neglected. The scene is a shell of its former self. Yet, it's not uncommon for me to run into arcade games like Pac-Man or Space Invaders at bowling alleys or movie theaters. Games like this that are simple enough for anybody to grasp, and have a sort of universal appeal to them. Foundational pieces of art. I never had a chance to be in an arcade during the prime days. I never got to gather around a bunch of people playing something like Space Invaders.

But, seeing a cabinet of Space Invaders in the wild, it's enough to remind me of how far video games have come and how simplistic they were at first. Space Invaders may just be a filler slot in a "50 Taito Games HD Collection" or whatever nowadays, but it's not disposable. It's a reminder of history.

Progressive difficulty in games? It was codified by Space Invaders, and all due to a bug! The game sped up due to the lack of processing power needed to render gradually fewer aliens, and this was kept since it helped create a sense of urgency. Should the player shoot through their shields to help with a certain shot? This was now more of a concern.

This is far from the last game to be defined by bugs that became features, however. Wizardry came a couple years later, and the glitch allowing Bishops to gain extreme EXP via identifying non-existent items was kept which helped make the game feel less sterile despite the objective lack of polish. Kara cancels in Street Fighter 2 defined combos in fighting games forever despite originating as a bug. Juggling in Onimusha was a glitch Capcom took note of as well.

Keeping cool bugs as features in video games has always been an interesting facet of game development, so seeing it have such a profound impact with Space Invaders alone is simply breathtaking.

Hell, Space Invaders is even considered the first fixed shooter of all time. All my favourite shmups (most notably, Galaga, which is essentially Space Invaders on steroids) can be traced back to Space Invaders' success. Space Invaders is so synonymous with video games the Invaders have an emoji you can find right in your generic Discord emoji list. It's probably the most iconic video game sprite of all time, save perhaps for Pac-Man's open mouth sprite. Space Invaders was a gold standard for arcade ports as well in the early years of gaming, being a killer app for the Atari 2600.

Even the exciting tempo in Space Invaders helped defined video game music as its own separate artform from regular music. More than just bleeps and bloops, surely. That's not even getting into how the high scores table prompted more developers to add these into games, even affecting the gameplay with countless games allowing for extra lives or dynamic difficulty changes once the player scored enough points.

However, it's also important to remember influence goes both ways. Nothing comes out of the void. Everything comes from something. Much like how so many of the foundational movies of the late 1800s to early 1900s were directly influenced by books such as Dracula (see Nosferatu being derived from it) so too were so many foundational games inspired by older mediums.

It may be common knowledge Space Invaders' screen was an answer to Breakout. However, what many people may not realize is that Space Invaders was created as an abstraction of what playing Space Battleship Yamato or Star Wars would be like, much like how Gradius was an attempt at transforming tokusatsu action into an arcadey experience a few years later. We stand on the shoulders of giants, who stood on the shoulders of giants of their era. That's creation. That's art. That's Space Invaders.

Next time: Akalabeth: World of Doom (1979)

Half-Century Challenge Series: https://www.backloggd.com/u/C_F/list/half-century-challenge/

HCC #8 = Space Wars (1977)

You know the drill by now folks, welcome back to the Half-Century Challenge. Today we're taking a look at Space Wars, the arcade game.

Space Wars is basically what happens if Pong and Asteroids had a baby, which feels weird to say given its release date. This was before the fighting game genre as we knew it existed of course, so this was some of the most in-depth competition one could have back in 1977.

I'm quite impressed with how in-depth some of the mechanics are. The players can ram into each other to actually cause death, and the sprites for the 2 ships differ for solid screen readability. The screen wrapping for bullets also adds for a nice bit of strategy, with a spot in the middle to die too.

But that's about all I can say about it. I appreciate Space Wars for what it is, but after Gun Fight's presentation with its cutscenes and silly UI text, I also find Space Wars lacking for what it's not. It feels like a bare minimum arcade game with none of the fancy attractions that go into an arcadey experience like cool setpieces to leave a mark on the player.

Asteroids would drop in the years to come and be much more of a crowd pleaser despite it being less competitive in nature, but it's still interesting to look back on Space Wars nonetheless!

Next time: Space Invaders (1978)

Half-Century Challenge Series: https://www.backloggd.com/u/C_F/list/half-century-challenge/

HCC #7 = Colossal Cave Adventure (1976)

>kill dragon
>With what? Your bare hands?
>yes
>CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE JUST VANQUISHED A DRAGON WITH YOUR BARE HANDS! (UNBELIEVABLE, ISN’T IT?)

Welcome back to the Half-Century Challenge folks. Mega recently put out a banger review for the challenge so as usual, check it out too: https://www.backloggd.com/u/MegaTheRealOne/review/1689816/

Today we're tackling what some would go as far as to call the most important video game of all time, Colossal Cave Adventure. Truth be told, this is not actually the first text adventure game (check out my review of Wander in the first link here) and it is obviously not the first video game ever either. However, it was one of the first games to gain a large amount of fame. This is especially true for its nature as a piece of interactive fiction with storytelling that, while still quite simple, was more than one would expect to chew into in 1976.

And while it is far, far, far from an intuitive game, look at the quote I posted above. This is pointed to as THE moment where user-friendliness and the subversion of expectations in software development started being more apparent for the gaming scene: https://medium.com/@aareed/killing-the-dragon-in-adventure-14c4c4edb130

Truth be told, I do not enjoy this game at all. I do not remotely like having to try 4 different synonyms to try grabbing, collecting, getting, or taking something. The RNG elements like the goblins are unbearable. But I heavily respect what it's doing.

"you gotta respect iot, even though it sucks. You just gotta respect it even if you fucking hate it . You gotta respect this shit"
-dril 2021

The magic term in computing, XYZZY, also spread into public consciousness for this game. If Monkey Island has paid tribute to you, you're probably pretty legit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FBgf_blDWQ

Anyway, this is a game I had tried to beat since the day I first used Windows 10 and saw it free in the Windows store. I dropped it like 5 times over the years before finally finishing it last year. I usually quite appreciate playing games like this for historical value even if occasionally I don't enjoy them in a traditional sense, but I'm not sure I got much out of this. It's a game with unreliable narration years before the likes of Portopia dropped, and that's cool. The magic code word is cool. The narrator calling the player out for typing fuck into the terminal is cool. A lot of elements of Colossal Cave are interesting, but in all honesty I struggle to rec this game to anyone. Play the DOS port with a walkthrough if you're really curious about it, but expect to get trolled pretty heavily https://i.imgur.com/6FCOfI7.png

Next time: Space Wars (1977)