Space Invaders was designed and programmed by Toshihiro Nishikado for Taito, Japan in 1978 and remains one of the most popular arcade games ever made.
Space Invaders was originally going to be called something completely different as the aliens were originally soldiers which you had to shoot down. They decided that it was politically unwise to encourage killing humans so changed the people into aliens.
The game was licensed from Taito by Midway for production in the US. In 1980, the game was licensed by Atari for the 2600 game system and was the first arcade game ever adapted for Atari's home system. The Space Invaders franchise has flourished for more than 20 years and according to Taito, the game has generated more than $500 million in revenues over multiple platforms including coin-op, the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo. It was based on a 8080 CPU, had muffled analog audio, and simulated color by putting a transparent overlay on top of a monochrome display.
Space Invaders was the first arcade game before Pinball Machines and Slots came along to work its way out of seedy conservative adults who were certain the games soured the minds of their youngsters. Residents of Mesquite, Texas pushed the issue all the way to the Supreme Court in their efforts to ban the illicit machines from their Bible-belt community. The game was so amazingly popular in Japan that it caused a coin shortage until the country's Yen supply was quadrupled. Entire arcades were opened in Japan specifically for this game. Space Inavders was released in Japan for the Super Famicom, to my knowledge its the same thing as Space Invaders for Super Gameboy. Many incidents of juvenile crime surrounded the release of this game. A girl was caught stealing $5000 from her parents and gangs of youths were reported to have robbed grocery stores just so they would have money to play the game.
Space Invaders was followed by several sequels as Space Invaders - Part II, Space Invaders Deluxe, Super Space Invaders 91 (Super Space Invaders has also another name... Majestic Twelve Space Invaders Part IV. Everything is the same as in SSI '91 except for the title screen. It was released in the US and Japan under this name, and SSI '91 was only released in Japan under as SSI '91), Space Invaders DX followed up in 1993 (a modern and 100 percent faithful JAMMA version of Taito's classic Space Invaders, but with a twist. There are several different games available to choose from: the upright and cocktail versions of the original plus the "colour overlay" versions) and in 1999 Space Invaders attacked once again from Activision.
