Category: History

Space Invaders

  • September 11, 2025

The first arcade game I ever saw was Space Invaders. It was at – of all places – the kiosk at Nobby’s Beach, but I didn’t play it since there was quite a crowd. I believe this would have been in 1979. I do believe the first arcade game I ever played was Space Invaders as well, although I don’t recall exactly where.

The game was released in Japan by Taito in 1978, and while not the very first arcade game, is unquestionably the most important and influential in creating the video game industry. It would eventually take the world by storm, but not until after it had completely conquered Japan.

These photos were taken during the late 1970s Space Invaders craze in Japan, when Taito could hardly manufacture cabinets fast enough. Shortly after the game was released they engineered a new type of sit-down (cocktail) cabinet to satisfy the requests of business that wanted their patrons to be able to drink and smoke as they played. These became extremely popular in Japan, and accounted for the large majority of Space Invaders cabinets made for the Japanese market. (In researching this I learned that cocktail cabinets were also very popular in Australia, but relatively rare in the rest of the world.)

In almost all of these black and white photos, the only game being played is Space Invaders (or some variant of). In under a year 100,000 cabinets were distributed around Japan, and even this was hardly enough. It has been reported that the average cabinet in late 1978 Japan was played over 50 times a day, and recouped its cost within a month.

Space Invaders had become a phenomenon and showed no signs of slowing down. Popular with both children and adults, in those heady days the game was playable almost everywhere. Some businesses changed into arcades as they found Space Invaders more profitable than whatever else they were trying to sell.

The Japanese ‘Game Centers’ we know today were born then, originally in the form of squalid rooms filled with cigarette smoke and the sounds of invaders and laser blasts, but in time into well-lit and very large halls full of games and people playing them.

Arcade gaming was a spectator sport, and the cocktail cabinets a perfect arena for a crowd to watch. Good players became famous, and some were even invited to play live on TV so others could observe their skill. Some players even wrote books on how to better your score, which became best-sellers.

It was during this time two urban legends about the game were born: that it caused a shortage of ¥100 coins and that it led to a rise in delinquency among children. Neither claim has born up to investigation in the decades since, and seem to have been inventions of non-Japanese journalists, but the popularity of the game in Japan between 1978 and 1980 was still incredible. It was the #1 video game in Japan for three years, and earned more money than any film released during that time.

Isn’t it wonderful seeing how popular the arcades were – and this was mostly for one game! You didn’t go in those days to play ‘video games’, you went to play Space Invaders. Imagine the sounds of so many machines being played at once!

Even the arcades were unambiguous about their purpose, as the above photo shows. The earliest Game Centers were even called ‘Space Invaders Houses‘ since that was why they existed. (I believe this image – which dates to 1979 – shows the same building in Ikebukuro that is now Mikado Game Center.)

I found a few colour photos from that era as well, although these date from a couple of years later (I think that is Galaxian in the above shot). Woodgrain paneling on the cocktail cabinet is so evocative of those days.

The above was an early Game Center in Nagoya, Japan. Most of the games look to be Space Invaders, and you can see four upright cabinets lined up in the background. The game on the left (The Driver) was a driving game released in January 1979 and was apparently a failure in arcades.

The above arcade looks so large and comfy. Once again it’s dominated by cocktail cabinets, and most of the uprights (at the back and far right) look to be Space Invaders or variants.

This photo is lovely! Plush chairs and cocktails (the drink, not the cabinets)! A proto-barcade if you will, showing there’s no such thing as a new idea. This brings back memories of a childhood trip to Canberra, and the arcade games they had in the bar. (I believe these guys are playing Moon Patrol.)

The above is a still from a (sadly now removed from YouTube) 1978 video of Nagoya city, showing a large billboard for Space Invaders displayed alongside a marquee for the first Superman film. When was the last time (if ever) you saw a billboard for an arcade game?

It wasn’t long until the Space Invaders craze spread worldwide, as the above story from the September 9, 1980 Sydney Morning Herald reveals. At the time of writing Sydney had 3000 machines, but Japan actually had almost 400,000. In time Japan would have over half a million, and to this day the total number of cabinets manufactured worldwide is unknown.

The rest of the world had its own version of the craze of course, but it wasn’t as intense or sustained as it had been in Japan because the game was six months old when it was released in the USA and almost a year old when released in Europe. This was enough time for other games (notably Galaxian) to steal some of its thunder. I was in the arcades by then – as often as possible! – and even with other games available I remember still playing Space Invaders, like the couple in the above photo taken in New Zealand in 1980, or this pair playing in Penn Station, New York in the same year:

Arcade game technology evolved quickly and only a few short years after 1978 Space Invaders was looking long in the tooth to most gamers. It had conquered the world, made an incredible amount of money, and even created a hobby now enjoyed by billions. But nothing lasts forever, and by 1980 the mania of Space Invaders – and arcades in general – seemed at its end, and the days of arcade games taking over the world looked to be fading into memory…

45+-Year-Old Star Wars Cards

  • February 9, 2025

The above pic shows the extent of my collection of the first series of Star Wars cards released by Topps back in 1977. As a child I had many more, but as I’ve mentioned on this blog before I glued them into a scrapbook 🙂

At the antique fair last year I purchased the above ‘repacks’ of vintage Star Wars cards. Here’s some of what was inside the one on the left:

In total the repack contained one sticker and 28 cards. They’re all original Topps cards, but they’re from the fifth series released in 1979! In Australia we only ever got one series of Star Wars cards, and had I known American kids saw five different sets on shelves all the way up the release of The Empire Strikes Back I would have been green with envy! I’m happy to have added these to my collection 🙂

Speaking of Empire, I still own my complete set of cards, which you can see above. These are in excellent condition since by that age (8, in 1980) I had stopped destroying my cards! As with Star Wars, Australia only had one set of Empire cards, but America had four, and the second repack I bought at the fair was from the third series:

There were 33 cards in the box, all different, and all in remarkably good condition considering they’re 45 years old. Again, I’m pleased to add them to my collection, but one in particular I was quite surprised to see.

The one on the left – which was also in the repack – is card #1 from the first Topps Empire set. On the right is my card #1 from my childhood set. I’ve circled the differences.

These are typically referred to as ‘Topps’ Star Wars cards today, but the truth is that Topps only sold them in the USA, and they were licensed and sold in other countries by different companies. In Australia it was a gum company named Scanlens, as you can see on the top left of the card shown above. I suspect this is the reason we only ever got one set for each film. Interestingly the Scanlens cards have a slight premium over the Topps ones, and a full set of Scanlens Empire cards in good condition can easily sell for over $100. The stickers are quite a bit rarer (I have most, but not all of them) and a Scanlens set can sell for several times the cost of the card set!

And what about Return Of The Jedi? Ive got a few dozen cards from the first Topps set, as well as about a half dozen unopened packs, including no-doubt rancid gum.

Should I open them?

  • Posted in Blog
  • Robert

Gum

  • January 30, 2025

Much like every other stripling, I had a healthy fear of chewing gum in my youth since I didn’t want it staying in my stomach for ten years (or however long the urban legend claimed). The only gum I chewed in those days came in trading card packs (then called ‘bubblegum cards’) or (usually in tiny pellet form) from the lolly machines at shops.

I used to think of chewing gum as an adult pastime – much like smoking – and never much understood it, only chewing until the taste was gone. Why would someone want to keep chewing such tasteless stuff? Unable to understand, I simply dismissed chewing gum as something not for me.

Those were the ‘big three’ in the 1980s in Australia – vintage examples no less – and while I don’t recall ever really buying it myself I can remember powdery sticks of Wrigley’s occasionally offered to my by someone who did. Since I was never one for spitting it out – much less sticking it somewhere – I’d always keep the little foil wrapper so I had something to put the gum into when I was done. There was another brand as well – Stimorol – but to me that was well into the ‘for grown ups’ camp, and I thought of it as a weirdly tasting lolly old guys consumed while they read the racing pages of the Sunday paper. Like Fisherman’s Friend.

And then, somewhere around maybe 1981 or 1982, bubblegum seemed to explode. All of a sudden every kid at school was chewing Hubba Bubba or Bubble Yum and blowing big ‘nonstick’ bubbles. Quickly we learned the more pieces you chewed the bigger the bubbles and had mouths full of the stuff! Schools banned it quickly of course, but that hardly stopped us. We’d smuggle packs into class, chew it surreptitiously, and put it in each other’s hair for laughs. As kids do.

Reading a bit about this now I learned that Hubba Bubba came to market in Australia in 1980 and that’s what triggered the ‘wars’. In the USA it was Bubble Yum vs Bubblelicious since Hubba Bubba had been retired (as a brand) even before their wars had began. My memory of gum exploding isn’t wrong either: the market increased more than tenfold between the late 70s and mid 80s, and bubblegum started being sold almost everywhere.

At first I was happy with the standard flavour since that’s all that was available, but a while later I got into orange Bubble Yum and swore it was best. And then Hubba Bubba released pineapple and I never looked back! I used to buy multiple packs at a time, and recall having a stash of a dozen or more packs secreted in a drawer in my bedside table (alongside the giant pile of Redskins). Even today I can almost recall the taste, although it’s been decades since I last bought a pack. Is pineapple even available any more? Is Hubba Bubba?

The bubblegum wars led to a massive increase in types of gum available. I remember Spurt (a type of gum with a liquid center), Big Tooth (a plastic tooth container full of gum), a dinosaur-head container with bone-shaped gum pellets, gum being added to ice creams (such as Bubble’O’Bill) and the various gums that came with tattoos, like the above type still sold in Australia today.

As with all fads, gum passed, although this was more due to increased awareness of the sugar content than kids losing interest. By the time sugar-free bubblegum turned up I had lost interest, moving on to a healthy obsession with chips, Mars bars and Polly Waffles. The rare times I bought gum was the occasional pack of Juicy Fruit since I craved the taste. I think Bernard still bought gum, as did some of my friends, but it was the chewing type and never bubblegum. I recall a brief flirtation with sherbet-filled fruit-shaped gum balls from machines, but even that didn’t seem to last long.

I almost never buy gum now, and only eat it when it comes with some sort of ‘candy toy’ I buy in Japan. After I started this post I became curious and picked up a pack of Juicy Fruit to see if it tasted the same. Imagine my surprise – and disappointment – to find the pellets are gone and it’s now a bland stick product without the wonderfully fruity taste. It has become a worthless thing; only fit for geezers dreaming of horses.

I’m sure gum will never die, but it may be that it’s long been dead to me. I’ve probably never really understood why anyone likes it, nor why it would be chosen over virtually any other candy lolly or snack. I suppose it’s just not my thing.

Do you chew gum? If so, why?