Space Invaders
Taito's Tomohiro Nishikado built this row of invaders alone. He is said to have long explained that he avoided human targets because, although animating people would have been easier, it did not sit right with him morally — I have not yet confirmed the primary-source quote. And the effect that became the game's signature — enemies speeding up as their numbers thin — was not a design decision. As fewer invaders remained on screen, the computer had more processing time to spare per invader, and the game sped up on its own. A side effect of lighter rendering load became the architecture of tension — constraint shaping play, a line this map crosses again and again. The tabletop cabinet had originally been built in 1976 for coffee shops, and this game spread it across the country; venues stocked with nothing but these machines came to be called "Invader Houses." At the end of 1978, the overseas rights went to Midway. By the end of 1979, roughly 750,000 units were installed worldwide, about 60,000 of them in North America, lighting the fuse for the arcade golden age on the far side of the ocean.
The myth, corrected
The Space Invaders boom drained Japan of its 100-yen coins
They were not drained — they were being minted in greater numbers. When the Nikkei reported in May 1979 that "100-yen coins are running out," the Bank of Japan denied any shortage and explained that circulation had risen 8.2% month-on-month by the end of January and 9.1% by the end of February (it did acknowledge the boom as one factor in that rise). The coins had not vanished; they were piling up on coffee-shop tables, then flowing back to the banks. I have not yet confirmed this against the Mint's own primary statistics.