Our 100th game release at 1UP Arcade is a game who's name says 'arcade game' more than any other. The creation of Tomohiro Nishikado and built originally on his own custom hardware for Taito, who manufactured and released the game in Japan, with Bally/Midway taking care of the United States release - and that's the 1978 version we have here as it celebrates it's 40th birthday! We all know how the game plays, but many may not know that the increasing speed of the invading aliens was not the result of programming, but actually due to a limitation of the games hardware. Nishikado found that as the screen was cleared of enemy invaders, the game would 'naturally' speed up, and so this was kept as a gameplay element! Space Invaders helped to define the Golden Age of video games, kick-off the success of arcades in the late 70's, and was the biggest earning entertainment product of it's time - almost equaling the release of the movie, Star Wars!