Stories in Digital Media (SIDM) was a blog run by a few students and the professor Frieder Nake, part of the former Digital Media programme in the state of Bremen, Germany. By the end of the first decade of the millennium, the web and digital technology were advancing at an unprecedented pace in the social and artistic sphere. Developments were exciting, and we kept a log of some events and took time to reflect.

What you see here is a rendition of the content as it was back then, in a different, static archival representation. Enjoy this glimpse into a hopeful and exciting past.

Stuff that may be relevant for the Digital Media programme in Bremen.

30 years of Space Invaders

· Andre Hoffmann · in Culture
space invaded Photo by (stacker) Did you know that Space Invaders drove the Japanese so crazy, that the coins which were used to get a credit to play the arcade ran into a shortage? That it was programmed, designed and engineered by only one guy? Find more interesting facts here. I would say, together with Pac Man, Tennis for Two (Pong) and Breakout, Space Invaders is one of the most famous and influential Video Games of all time. This month it turns 30 years! (If you shamelessly forgot, what that game is about again, play it here). A few years ago, an interesting project as a hommage to Space Invaders began all over the world. Space was invaded. Fotos were taken. And then some brave folks took up the challenge in the cinema:
Happy Birthday, Space Invaders! Here's to you, for another 30 years.

3 Comments

  1. drnn1076
    Indeed interesting, but I think one videogame far more influential than space invaders was Spacewar!. Some people say it is the First "Computer game". While Space invaders became a trademark, it helped the commercialization of videogames in the forms of arcade; Spacewar! developed at MIT during the 60's, was born from the hacker culture. It was aimed to demonstrate, what computers can do!. "Computers are not just big machines to perform calculations!". They said at that time. Hackers made Spacewar!,whereas planners did Space Invaders. In history of videogames and in games culture this is an important. difference.
  2. drnn1076
    This project, by now a lit bit old 1998, shows Space Invaders in a different role.
    Trigger Happy. For those interested in Video games as art form or in digital art this is a remarkable piece.
  3. admin
    Well, Spacewar! was, as you stated, a computer game, not a video game. The difference is that video games are developed on a plattform solely used for this purpose (running the game, playing the game). The first video game was Tennis for Two, developed by a researcher at the Brookhaven National Labs who, by the way, witnessed the first detonation of the atomic bomb. The idea was later developed into a game we know today as (Ping) Pong. It is very hard to say what influence Spacewar! actually had in comparison to those other video games. Quite sure I can say that the influence of games like Space Invaders, Pac Man, etc. was much more obvious on a general cultural level. On the technical level, Spacewar! definitely showed some new paths for software developers, but hardly anyone remembers that game by name nowadays.

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