10 Awesome Glitches That Improved Video Games

7. Space Invaders - Enemy Speed Up

Here's a glitch that actually occurred during development of a game, but became an integral part of the title's fabric and design structure. Playing Space Invaders, we all know that the alien enemies advance towards you at a faster pace the longer the game goes on, but this was initially due to the unexpected technical limitations of the software used to create the game. Enemy movement was locked to a certain speed - or else the game would hang - but as the aliens are killed off, the remaining ones are able to progressively move faster. Gamers have always assumed that this was merely an effort to challenge the player, but it was in fact the game's memory bottleneck reducing, allowing for a more frantic speed of play. Ultimately, it has become one of the game's best-known flourishes, and one we wouldn't want to be without. Can you imagine how dull the game would seem without this ramping up of the difficulty?