Space Invaders

Space Invaders Related Projects Mikael Agren patched the original ROMs to add a high-score table. Check out his project blog and demo movie. The Space Invaders System Space Invaders as described on the Wikipedia was one of the very first video arcade games. Released in 1978 by Taito, it ushered in the Golden Age of Arcade Games. Most video games before SI used dedicated circuit boards without a CPU. SI uses an 8080 CPU (the primitive forerunner of the Z80). The CPU board carried forward into several other games. SI uses a black-and-white raster display (grid of pixels). Interestingly, vector graphics like in Atari Asteroids did not hit the market until 1979. In SI the hardware paints the monitor in the usual way: from left to right and top to bottom with a vertical retrace at the end. But the monitor is rotated counterclockwise 90 degrees counter-clockwise in the game cabinet. The rotation makes the code comments and screen coordinates a bit confusing. Here and in the code comment ... Read full article.