Tomohiro Nishikado

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Tomohiro Nishikado (西角友宏 Nishikado Tomohiro?) (born 1944 in Osaka Prefecture) is a Japanese video game developer. He is best known as the creator of the video game Space Invaders, released to the public in 1978 by the Taito Corporation of Japan.

Originally Nishikado wanted to use airplanes as enemies for Space Invaders, but would have encountered problems making them move smoothly due to the limited computing power at the time (the game was based on Intel's 8 bit 8080 microprocessor). Humans would have been easier to render, but Nishikado viewed games allowing the killing of virtual humans as immoral.

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Nishikado graduated with an engineering degree from Tokyo Denki University in 1968. He joined Taito Trading Company in 1969. After working on mechanical games, in 1972, he developed "Soccer" (similar to Pong), Japan's first locally-produced video arcade game, released in 1973. He produced over 10 video games before Space Invaders was released in 1978. He left Taito in 1996 to found his own company, Dreams.[1][2][3]

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