Space Invaders was designed and programmed by Toshihiro Nishikado for Taito, Japan in 1978 and remains one of the most popular arcade games ever made.

Space Invaders was originally going to be called something completely different as the aliens were originally soldiers which you had to shoot down. They decided that it was politically unwise to encourage killing humans so changed the people into aliens.

The game was licensed from Taito by Midway for production in the US. In 1980, the game was licensed by Atari for the 2600 game system and was the first arcade game ever adapted for Atari’s home system. The Space Invaders franchise has flourished for more than 20 years and according to Taito, the game has generated more than $500 million in revenues over multiple platforms including coin-op, the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo. It was based on a 8080 CPU, had muffled analog audio, and simulated color by putting a transparent overlay on top of a monochrome display.  Read More here