How Video Games Changed the World Page #2

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Space Invaders was my life.

You would get 40p dinner money

each day

and you could go down to the cafe

down the hill

and get beans on toast for 20p and

have two games of Space Invaders.

The pace of Space Invaders

was beautiful.

As a newb, who had never played,

you know, an arcade game before,

you could walk up, put 10p in,

and you could play for, like,

five or ten minutes

without being annihilated.

And that pace meant that it

drew people in.

It also satisfied something which

gamers seem to enjoy - attrition,

cleaning something up.

You have this block of stuff which

had to be cleared away.

It's odd, because it is something

you can never win. You clear them

up, there's a little pause

and they all come back again.

But somehow, you want to keep on

doing it.

Mastering Space Invaders became

an overriding obsession for many.

This is one of the first published

books by revered author Martin Amis.

It's Invasion Of

The Space Invaders.

A surprisingly in-depth

collection of his arcade tips with

a foreword by Steven Spielberg.

Martin Amis has since

disavowed his involvement

in the Space Invaders tips scene.

And the game's appeal wasn't simply

restricted to the

nature of its challenge. The sheer

experience was equally important.

This was the first game to evoke

a distinct mood and tone.

The music sped up as soon as aliens

got closer to you, and it was like

that excitement and that,

"Oh, this is really responding

to what I am doing."

It's like a heartbeat when the Space

Invaders are coming down the screen.

It's, "Dum, dum, dum, dum."

It accentuates your own tension,

it was perfect.

It was very stylistic.

You know, the shape of the alien,

as soon as you saw it,

you kind of understood it

and it burnt it into your mind.

As a result, Space Invaders wasn't

just an arcade hit,

but a bona fide, mainstream,

cultural phenomenon.

Yes, tonight, we will be discovering

just who the Space Invader

champion of the Midlands is!

Space Invaders tournaments were

considered entertaining enough

to be televised, for God's sake!

'And how Tim Coxon of Stoke

must be feeling now.'

And the world of cheerful children's

animation also couldn't

resist the pull of the global fad

of the moment.

Left a bit, steady.

Right. Right a bit, fire.

Every element of the Invaders

template had such an instant

iconic purity, it still resonates

today, with references to it

popping up everywhere.

Slick TV commercials

nod in its direction and it

appears on walls around the world,

courtesy of street artist Invader.

And Space Invaders still

survives as a game,

albeit in a remixed, re-imagined,

modern form.

I was very honoured to be

asked to do it.

Working on Space Invaders

is like being asked to go on stage

and play with Dave Gilmour out

of Pink Floyd or something like that.

Space Invaders was the catalyst

for an explosion of similarly themed

games in the late '70s and early

'80s as pubs, arcades and cafes

rang to the sound of zipping lasers

and white noise explosions.

The primitive graphics of the day

were ideally suited

for depicting basic shapes

competing for power in black

space, but with this incessant

focus on interstellar combat,

games were in danger of becoming

a chiefly male obsession.

To gain wide acceptance once again,

games would need to become

less abstract.

What they needed was some

kind of likeable character.

Pac-Man was arguably

videogaming's first mascot.

He is sort of the first character,

I guess, you know, the very,

very iconic character of videogames.

The designer of Pac-Man,

he introduced this Japanese concept

of kawaii, which is cute.

Lots of Japanese design is based

around this sense of kawaii,

cuteness.

And so, not only is Pac-Man

very kawaii, very cute,

but also, so are the ghosts.

He did this because he wanted to

appeal to young girls

and women as well as men,

and in fact, he said in interviews

since then, which sounds sexist now,

but he's thinking, "How can I

make it appeal to women?"

"Oh, I know, women like food."

So...

Famously, he'd seen images

of a pizza with a slice taken out

and he saw Pac-Man in that image.

And Pac-Man does have

a lot of character.

I think the reason why everything

went Pac-Man crazy for

a while was because he had a face.

Even the ghosts, even the enemies had

character, and they had names.

Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde.

They all had very distinct

personalities

and they did their own

thing in the maze.

Pac-Man's rudimentary artificial

intelligence also represented

a breakthrough, tricking the player

into thinking the ghosts were

actually alive with their own

personal traits.

Blinky, the red ghost,

was a fast, aggressive hunter.

Inky, the blue one, was a dawdler.

Pinky would anticipate

where you were going and try

and block you off,

while Clyde, the orange one, was

programmed to rapidly chase you

until he got too close,

at which point he'd

dart back into a corner.

This hidden layer of sophistication

made the ghosts seem

less like computerised drones

and more like fallible,

living characters.

But the Pac-Man ghosts,

I really liked.

And the cherry, the idea

of a floating cherry was cool.

And the fact that it changed

when it ate.

I mean, all these things were

kind of major steps forward.

This was the grammar of gaming being

constructed before your eyes.

It was the first time people thought,

"Well, why not do this?"

It was the first videogame to

actually feature cut scenes as well.

There were little humorous

cut scenes with Pac-Man

and the ghosts before each level.

You had Pac-Man being

pursued by ghosts

and then Pac-Man getting a giant.

He would turn around and chase

the ghost off the other way.

And one of the ghosts would get

his little rope caught and he would

come out and see his pink leg stuck,

sticking out from underneath.

It introduced the gentle element

of humour to game play which

I think helped broaden its appeal.

Likeable characters are big business

and Pac-Man was no exception.

Pac-Man, instantly after it came

out, it was so enormously popular.

We started seeing Pac-Man

T-shirts, Pac-Man lunchboxes,

there was a Pac-Man cartoon.

Pac-Man soon became a staple

of the cheesy American Saturday

morning cartoon slot,

winning his own goofy series as well

as some irritating commercials.

# Now Pac-Man isn't just

a game you play

# It's a crispy corn cereal

that's coming your way. #

Chomp, chomp, delicious!

For a time, no quintessentially

'80s commercial was complete

without a whorish cameo

from the circular pill freak.

# 7-Up cools your thirst. #

Pac-Man was on stuff. There was

a Pac-Man board game as well.

It was a terrible board game with

a big plastic Pac-Man that would

go about, gobbling up pellets

and stuff.

And even there was the weird

knock-off stuff as well.

Like, how do you badly draw a

Pac-Man? You know what I mean?

But a badly drawn Pac-Man.

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