One of the most successful arcade titles of all time invaded first in 1978, when Space Invaders, designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, debuted as an arcade cabinet. But two years later the alien takeover continued, with the home port of the game arriving on the Atari 2600.

The 1980 home console version was notable for a number of reasons: it was the very first official licensing of an arcade game for home video game consoles, and it would also become the first video game to sell more than a million copies. In fact, it sold more than 2 million cartridges in its first year of being on sale, helping to quadruple sales of the Atari 2600 console itself and essentially becoming the very first “killer app” for a video game console.

As in the original arcade edition, Space Invaders put characters in control of a laser cannon, which can move horizontally across the bottom of the screen, in order to shoot down 55 (five rows of 11) aliens. The aliens slowly advance towards the bottom of the screen, and get faster as more of them are eliminated. The player can take shelter behind bunkers, but these can be destroyed by alien fire.

Other official ports of the arcade version would later arrive on the Atari 5200 and Super Nintendo, among other consoles. The enormous success of the game spurred other companies to release imitations in the forms of Super Invader, TI Invaders and more.

Though the original game is still the best-remembered, Space Invaders eventually became a long-running franchise, with sequels including Part II, Extreme, Infinity Gene and Space Invaders Get Even.