7 Glitches In Video Games That Became Essential Features In Their Franchise

Space Invaders is easily one of the most iconic and inspirational video games of all time. In fact, it introduced the entire concept of the video game ‘difficulty curve’, where a game gets progressively harder as it goes on.

As the player destroys the oncoming alien invaders' ships, they gradually speed up their descent (in an early example of video game realism, as people tend to move faster when you shoot at them). This feature was actually due to an oversight by the original programmer, Tomohiro Nishikado. All the enemy sprites on screen put a lot of pressure on the processor, which slowed the game down. This meant that, as enemy ships were shot down, the amount of sprites on screen decreased and so it ran faster as the game went on.

The feature was so enjoyable that the developer left it in, and every variation of Space Invaders since has featured the same concept. This led to other games adopting the principle of ‘difficulty curves’, and so has earned the enviable title of the most influential video game glitch in the entire history of the medium.