Two things were certain: Star Wars had made space battles fashionable and they had to make a game more action-packed than Breakout. Nonetheless there weren’t many current trends in the world to inspire the Taito developers. The rapidly evolving chipset technology of the era was allowing for a lot of innovation. Classics like Atari, Pong, and Breakout had started dominating the arcade halls and had no intention of slowing down. One of the 70’s arcade cabinet giants Taito, a Japanese company, had to respond to the rise of the American companies of the era. By doing this we will be able to witness how the genre has evolved and how it has affected other shooters in the decades that followed. Instead I will begin this historical examination with the specific sub-genre of the “fixed shooter”. I won’t delve too much into the contemporary shoot’em ups that usually have moving screens. This is to say that these are games where you stay on a non-moving screen and shoot enemies while mostly moving along a single axis. Upon a bit of research I’ve come to realize that this genre is specifically called the “fixed shooter”. However Space Invaders is a much different game than the usual shoot’em up. Along with Pac-Man these two are the biggest icons of arcade gaming. As you all know the oldest ancestor of this genre is the 1978 arcade game Space Invaders. While they are mostly built on the simple premise of “shooting the enemies on the screen” this genre also has many sub-genres. Shoot’em ups were one of the most common genres of my childhood years in the 80’s.
And the spacie invaders get by on you series#
Another one of the genres I would like to examine in this series where I delve into the roots of video games is the shoot’em up (a.k.a.
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