-1- I often wondered whether the shuffling of the Invaders was due to hardware limitations rather than deliberate design. In other words, if the board had the necessary power, maybe the invaders would have moved as a complete block (as in the Atari 2600 version).
-2- The now classic dum, dum, dum, dum of the invaders was possibly, IMHO, inspired by 'Saturn' from Gustav Holsts' Planet Suite at around 1:45 minutes into the piece. I noticed some similarities with this section and Invaders a while ago.
As I'd not found these answers, I decided to add an addition to the wikipedia page as questions to be asked of invaders programmer Tomohiro Nishikado as I think they are historically interesting (they've never been asked in any interviews I've ever seen). However, the addition got removed by an administrator who clearly thought not worth asking ...
It's a pity as I think Space Invaders would look very different if they moved as a single block and it does have a certain charm with their little shuffle. It would have been interesting to get Nishikado's thoughts on these (while he's still around).
God, I miss those dark, musty arcades ....
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Space Invaders - curious thoughts
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