In 1977 Tomohiro Nishikado, a 33-year-old Japanese computer programmer, was a company employee, like millions of others. In his spare time he played video table-tennis, manoeuvring white paddles up and down a black-and-white TV screen to return a white blob of a ball to his opponent. In the amusement arcades, he had noticed a new game called Breakout, which involved moving a paddle from side to side to hit a ball, in order to destroy a series of blocks at the top of the screen.

One day, Nishikado had an idea. What if the blocks in Breakout could fire back? “I was absolutely hooked on Breakout,” Nishikado recalls. “I had already developed some games, so I wanted to make one that was better than this. I realised that the fun thing about Breakout was the sense of accomplishment when you finish a stage by clearing a set number of targets. At the time, we had heard good things about Star Wars, so I thought it might be a good idea to shoot some aliens.”

It was a great idea, so great that Space Invaders, the game he invented, is still going strong 30 years later, with a new version Space Invaders Extreme, released yesterday.