10 Incredible Video Game Moments Created By Accident

Everyone over the age of thirty has either played or at least heard of Space Invaders.

Arguably as famous as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, Space Invaders was a massive success back in the early eighties.

Armed with a trusty laser cannon, the premise was to defeat wave after wave of terrifying (?) aliens as they descended down the screen toward the player.

With each successive wave dispatched by the plucky player, the remaining aliens' movement sped up, making it harder to keep them at bay and ramping up the challenge as the game went on.

And that's the thing...

Game creator Tomohiro Nishikado struggled to make Space Invaders playable, as microcomputers in 1970s Japan were simply not up to the task.

In spite of his best efforts, he could not translate his vision into reality exactly as intended as the enemy movement was - to Nishikado's mind - painfully slow.

He eventually noticed, however, that the remaining enemies sped up as their counterparts were defeated, as the removal of their sprites inevitably freed up processing power.

Far from trying to fix this, Nishikado left well alone, and the game we all know and love - with the increasing enemy speed and subsequent difficulty curve - was born.