In the summer of 1978 Taito released Space invaders in Japan. Its fame and it's name swept Britain and the USA in 1979. Kids stopped listening to music, playing sports or going to movies they played Space Invaders. All video games took off and the 400,000 languishing VCS's were shipped out to the shops. Many rip off versions of Space Invaders were produced as handheld electronic games. These versions though unsophisticated sold thousands as the fever spread.

To Atari's credit they acted fast and the acted right. Raymond Kassar had been running the company since early 1979, when Bushnell was fired. On his order they negotiated with Taito for the exclusive home TV rights. Then Atari produced a cracking VCS version in February 1980. VCS Space Invaders saved the VCS from it's floundering position. The console was bought simply to play Space Invaders.

The other cartridges then became a plus point as purchasers started investigating the growing range of cartridges. Atari had a head start and it's wide range of games would always count in it's favour when compared to other manufacturers systems. Largely because of the Space Invaders cart 125,000 VCS's and half a million cartridges were sold in Britain in 1980. One of it's features was that it had 112 variations on the game with zigzagging bombs and moving shields etc.

To this day I don't think people want that many options. It may sound good when you buy but you don't use them - game 1 press game reset and Go!

Rick Mauer was the programmer of VCS Space Invaders, Atari's first million selling cartridge. He subsequently never programmed another game for Atari. He is said to have earned only $11,000 for a cartridge that grossed more than $100 million. He left the company six months later, suffering from "programmer burnout".

Atari's arcade section started to come up with hits in the now burgeoning coin-op scene. These could all exclusively appear on the VCS, so Atari had a guaranteed source of hit games. Atari didn't mess this up. The home versions of Asteroids, Missile Command and later Centipede were very playable games, they should be lessons in gameplay to todays programmers.

Other coin-op companies were signed up to contracts. Williams and especially Namco signed up to have their games converted. Games with a great reputation already, were sure to be best sellers.

Atari promoted the games with national and international tournaments. In the autumn of 1980 Atari ran a national VCS Space Invaders competition with regional heats and the final in New York City. It gained them both press and television coverage and confirmed the Atari name. Atari claimed to be The Super System...More Games. More Fun". In August 1980 Atari estimated it had sold about two million VCS's in the US alone.