# Space Invaders Cabinet

The 1978 Space Invaders upright cabinet, its mirror\-and\-moon optics revealed in a cutaway, with the game playable on its own controls

By Numa

Topic: Games

[Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/ikfbeMMaCXii)

## Guide

### 1. Space Invaders, 1978

Taito's Space Invaders arrived in this upright cabinet, built under licence by Midway in America\. Rows of aliens march down the screen, the player's cannon fires back from behind four bunkers, and the attract mode plays on its own until someone drops a coin in\.

The game ran on an Intel 8080 drawing straight into a black\-and\-white bitmap of 224 by 256 pixels\.

### 2. Side art and marquee

The sides carry the cabinet's famous painted creatures, horned and furry, outlined in white and offset in red on a deep blue\. Up top, a lamp behind the marquee lights the yellow title and the flying saucers\.

The creatures appear nowhere in the game itself; they were painted to draw players from across the room\.

### 3. Controls and coin door

The control panel is simple: LEFT and RIGHT move the laser cannon, FIRE shoots, and the 1 PLAYER and 2 PLAYERS buttons start a game once there is credit\. Coins go into the two slots on the door below, where each reject button glows red\.

### 4. The screen is not where it seems

Cut away the side and the trick appears\. The monitor lies flat on its back, facing up\. A half\-silvered mirror at 45 degrees reflects its picture towards the player, who sees the invaders floating in front of a painted moon lit by a lamp behind the glass\.

The blue dashes trace where the eye believes the screen stands: a virtual image behind the mirror\.

### 5. Colour from cellophane

The monitor is black and white\. Strips of coloured film stuck across the tube do the rest: orange\-red where the mystery ship flies, green over the bunkers, the cannon and the spare lives\. Anything that crosses a band changes colour as it passes\.

Bullets turning green as they fall onto the bunkers are the cellophane at work, not the program\.

### 6. The march speeds up

Four descending bass notes thud in a loop as the fleet steps sideways\. The machine moves one invader at a time, so every alien destroyed leaves less work and the whole formation, and its march, gets faster until the last one races across\.

The speed\-up was a side effect of the slow hardware that the designer chose to keep\.

### 7. Your turn

The credit is on the house: press 1 PLAYER to start\. Hold LEFT or RIGHT to move\. Auto fire shoots for you; turn it off to use FIRE\.