About the game
The game that started the arcade business: rows of aliens come down, you slide left and right behind four shields and shoot up. They speed up as you kill them — that was a hardware limit that turned into the best mechanic in the game.
Taito, 1978.
Controls
- Arrows — move
- Z and X — action buttons
- Enter — Start
- Shift — Select
- On a phone the buttons appear on screen
The version in short
- Platform: Arcade machine
- Year: 1978
- Genre: Arcade shooter
- Size: 0.2 MB, loaded once
How this runs
The emulator and the cartridge are hosted by us and everything is computed in your browser: nothing goes to a third-party site. Saves are written into this browser on this device. More about the section on the retro games page.
FAQ
Is this the actual 1978 cartridge?
Yes, the original Space Invaders ROM, unmodified. The emulator runs it the way the console did.
How big is it and what loads?
The cartridge is 0.2 MB plus the emulator. It loads once and then comes from the browser cache.
Can I play on a phone?
Yes. On a touch screen the emulator draws its own d-pad and action buttons. Landscape gives a much bigger picture.
Are saves kept?
In this browser on this device. Another browser or a cleared cache means starting over.
