Space Invaders' aliens based on War of the Worlds
The aliens from Space Invaders are easily the most famous icons of video-gaming, if not of the entire 80s. They've been ported to all manner of modern art, ranging from street installations to superb block-prints by my artist friend El Rey. So you have to wonder: How did Tomohiro Nishikado, the designer for Space Invaders, decide on the alien design?
In their October 2005 issue, writers at The Edge magazine published a superb Q&A with Nishikado in which they asked precisely this question. As it turns out, Nishikado originally thought of making the enemies airplanes, but they were too hard to render realistically. Human beings were easier, but -- and I just love this -- he thought it would be "immoral" to have a game in which you shot virtual humans. Eventually he drew inspiration from the recent success of this weird new movie called Star Wars, and decided to use aliens.
But the best part? He based his aliens on the Martians from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds:
In the story, the alien looked like an octopus. I drew a bitmap image based on the idea. Then I created several other aliens that look like sea creatures such as squid or crab.
That's just excellent. Those are pictures of Nishikado's workbook above. It's funny -- after all those years of playing Space Invaders, I never thought of connecting the lowermost "grunt" aliens onscreen to octopi. I did dimly think that the uppermost ones looked like squid, but never in my wildest dreams would I have figured they were based on Wells' aliens.
As a sidenote, I recently discovered that Edward Gorey once illustrated a version of War of the Worlds. Now, a Gorey-animated video-game version of Space Invaders? I would pay good money for that.
(Thanks to Joystiq for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at October 16, 2005 06:58 PM
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The artist responsible for most of the street installations you mentioned has a site here. There's also a Flickr group devoted to collecting pictures of them. I wonder what Mr. Nishikado thinks of this development?
Posted by: otherthings at October 17, 2005 10:57 AM
Not to be too much of a nit-picker, but Clive, you seem like somone who's really into squid and similar animals. That's why I wanted to let you know that the plural of "octopus" is not "octopi," it's actually "octopuses." "Octopus" is actually a word of Greek origin, not Latin. So the plural in Greek is actually "octopodes" -- but in American English Usage dictionaries it's set to "Octopuses."
Since you're a professional writer, I thought you might care... if not, sorry for the interruption!
Posted by: Dave Sandoval at October 17, 2005 11:48 AM
otherthings, thanks for the link! Those pictures are cool.
Dave, no, I didn't know that, and thanks for the info! Octopi just sounded so funny as a word that I liked using it. But if it's not correct, I won't.
Posted by: Clive at October 17, 2005 12:49 PM
Beautiful. This notebook picture is like discovering an early sketch for Mona Lisa. I hope they end up in a videogame museum, along with the (probably quite dry now) pizza with a slice cut out that was the inspiration for PacMan (according to the legend). The funny coincidence is that I am wearing *right now* a tee-shirt with a Space Invaders screenshot :) Now I know where these aliens come from. Thanks for this discovery, Clive.
Posted by: Guillermito at October 17, 2005 1:15 PM
The Mona Lisa sketchbook -- precisely! Man, I wish someone would go around and gather up all the design documents, sketchbooks and storyboards for the early 80s video games and publish them in a nice fat coffee-table book. Geeks would so buy that. Guillermito, great coincidence!
Posted by: Clive at October 18, 2005 12:31 AM
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The artist responsible for most of the street installations you mentioned has a site here. There's also a Flickr group devoted to collecting pictures of them. I wonder what Mr. Nishikado thinks of this development?
Posted by: otherthings![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 17, 2005 10:57 AM
Not to be too much of a nit-picker, but Clive, you seem like somone who's really into squid and similar animals. That's why I wanted to let you know that the plural of "octopus" is not "octopi," it's actually "octopuses." "Octopus" is actually a word of Greek origin, not Latin. So the plural in Greek is actually "octopodes" -- but in American English Usage dictionaries it's set to "Octopuses."
Since you're a professional writer, I thought you might care... if not, sorry for the interruption!
Posted by: Dave Sandoval![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 17, 2005 11:48 AM
otherthings, thanks for the link! Those pictures are cool.
Dave, no, I didn't know that, and thanks for the info! Octopi just sounded so funny as a word that I liked using it. But if it's not correct, I won't.
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 17, 2005 12:49 PM
Beautiful. This notebook picture is like discovering an early sketch for Mona Lisa. I hope they end up in a videogame museum, along with the (probably quite dry now) pizza with a slice cut out that was the inspiration for PacMan (according to the legend). The funny coincidence is that I am wearing *right now* a tee-shirt with a Space Invaders screenshot :) Now I know where these aliens come from. Thanks for this discovery, Clive.
Posted by: Guillermito![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 17, 2005 1:15 PM
The Mona Lisa sketchbook -- precisely! Man, I wish someone would go around and gather up all the design documents, sketchbooks and storyboards for the early 80s video games and publish them in a nice fat coffee-table book. Geeks would so buy that. Guillermito, great coincidence!
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 18, 2005 12:31 AM