There wasn't a cunning piece of coding behind this thrilling game pacing feature.
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(Image credit: Future) One of the most charming bug = feature tales is the story behind the thrilling crescendo of pacing gamers experienced when playing the original Space Invaders arcade machine. This weekend, self-proclaimed C/C++ expert Zuhaitz reminded us that the adrenaline-pumping rising intensity of Taito’s arcade classic was not due to genius-level coding. Rather, it was simply the fact that the underlying Intel 8080 could run the game code faster as aliens were wiped from the screen one by one, by the player dishing out laser missile death.
If you ever played Space Invaders you surely noticed that each time you killed an alien the game went faster.But, if you checked the source code from one of the arcade machines, you would find nothing related to this. That's because this mechanic is a hardware accident.The… pic.twitter.com/UkqTEUvC9I October 25, 2025
Intel’s 8080 processor , launched in 1974, was the successor to the legendary 8008 , enhanced with a more powerful and flexible architecture. However, with its ~5,000 transistors, 8/16-bit bus, and ~2.0 MHz clock speed, powering the original Space Invaders with 224 x 256 mono pixels was probably near the limits of its gaming capabilities. Hence, the impact on gameplay ‘feel’ as the alien horde was eliminated by the player.
The processor-bottlenecked performance slowdown persisted, even though the CPU was aided by a dedicated Fujitsu MB14241 video shifter in this cabinet design. Also, a Texas Instruments SN76477 sound chip was used for the iconic audio .
3D Pinball bug allowed game to run at 5,000 FPS
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/space-invaders-arcade-game-ran-faster-as-enemies-died-due-to-intel-8080-bottleneck-expert-coder-asserts-hardware-accident-to-blame#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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