Tomohiro Nishikado (西角 友宏, Nishikado Tomohiro) was born on March 31, 1944. He is a Japanese video game developer and engineer. He created the arcade shooting game Space Invaders, which was released to the public in 1978 by the Taito Corporation in Japan. This game is often credited as the first shooting game and for starting the golden age of arcade video games. Before Space Invaders, Nishikado designed other games for Taito. These include the mechanical shooting game Sky Fighter (1971) and Sky Fighter II, the sports video game TV Basketball (1974), the vertical scrolling racing game Speed Race (also called Wheels, 1974), the multi-directional shooter Western Gun (also called Gun Fight, 1975), and the first-person flight simulator Interceptor (1975).
Early life and career
Tomohiro Nishikado was born in 1944. He started doing his own science experiments at a young age. In junior high school, he worked with electronics by building radios and amplifiers. He got an engineering degree from Tokyo Denki University in 1967. He originally planned to work for Sony, but he did not pass the final test for the company. Instead, he joined an audio engineering company called Takt in early 1967. After finishing his training there, he was not placed in the development department. He left the company a year later and looked for another job. He eventually accepted a job offer from a communications company. Before starting his new job, he met an old colleague at a train station. His friend told him about the work being done at Taito, which interested Nishikado. His friend said Taito needed new engineers, so Nishikado decided to join Taito instead of the communications company.
He joined Pacific Industries Ltd in 1968, a company owned by Taito Trading Company. He worked on arcade electro-mechanical games and created two popular target shooting games called Sky Fighter (1971) and Sky Fighter II. His bosses at Taito believed transistor-transistor logic (TTL) technology would be important in the arcade industry. They asked Nishikado to study TTL technology because he was the only person at the company who knew how to work with integrated circuit (IC) technology. He was also one of the few engineers in Japan with experience in solid-state electronics.
He began working on video game development in 1972. He wanted to create arcade video games, so he spent six months taking apart Atari’s Pong arcade unit to learn how its circuits worked. He modified the game and created Elepong, one of Japan’s first locally made arcade video games, released in 1973. He made more than ten video games before 1977, before Space Invaders was released in 1978.
Best known games
Tomohiro Nishikado created Sky Fighter, a target shooting game released by Taito in 1971 for amusement arcades. The game used mirrors to show images of model planes flying over a sky-blue background that moved on a rotating drum. Sky Fighter was popular but too large for most places, so Taito later released a smaller version called Sky Fighter II, which sold 3,000 arcade cabinets.
Nishikado’s first original arcade video games were Soccer and Davis Cup, both released in November 1973. Soccer was a team sport game based on association football. It used a green background to look like a playing field and let players control both a forward and a goalkeeper. Each side had a goal. Davis Cup was a tennis doubles game with four players, similar to Pong but played in teams. Nishikado believed Soccer was Japan’s first original video game, unlike earlier Japanese copies of Pong, such as Sega’s Pong Tron and Taito’s Elepong.
In April 1974, Taito released TV Basketball, an arcade basketball game designed by Nishikado. He wanted to move beyond simple shapes and used character graphics to show human players. This was the first video game to use character sprites for players and the earliest basketball-themed arcade game. It was also the second basketball video game overall, following a version for the Magnavox Odyssey console in 1973.
In February 1974, TV Basketball became the first non-American video game licensed for release in North America. Atari initially planned to release it, but Midway Manufacturing took over instead. Midway released it in the United States in June 1974 as TV Basketball, selling 1,400 arcade cabinets. It was Midway’s first basketball game, followed later by Arch Rivals (1989) and NBA Jam (1993).
Nishikado’s Speed Race, released in November 1974, was a driving racing game. He considered it his favorite game before Space Invaders. It was one of the first Japanese video games released in North America, distributed by Midway. The game used sprites with collision detection and introduced scrolling graphics, where the track moved vertically and widened or narrowed as the player’s car advanced. Players raced against other cars, with more cars appearing as the score increased. The faster the car moved, the higher the score. Speed Race was adapted from earlier electro-mechanical games, Kasco’s Mini Drive (1958) and Taito’s Super Road 7 (1970).
Unlike earlier games that used volume-control dials, Speed Race had a realistic racing wheel with an accelerator, gear shift, speedometer, and tachometer. It could be played by one or two players, with options for beginner or advanced difficulty levels. Midway rebranded it as Wheels in the United States, and it influenced later racing games. Wheels and Wheels II sold 10,000 cabinets in the United States, becoming the best-selling arcade game of 1975.
Speed Race had nine sequels:
– Speed Race Deluxe (1975)
– Speed Race Twin (1976)
– Super Speed Race (1977)
– Super Speed Race V (1978)
– T. T. Speed Race CL (1978)
– Speed Race CL-5 (1980)
– Super Speed Race GP V (1980)
– Super Speed Race Jr. (1985)
– Automobili Lamborghini: Super Speed Race 64 (1998)
In 1975, Nishikado released Western Gun (called Gun Fight in the United States), inspired by a 1969 Sega electro-mechanical game. It was an early on-foot, multi-directional shooter that allowed two players to move and shoot each other. It introduced video game violence, showing human-to-human combat and guns on screen. The game used dual-stick controls: one joystick for movement and another for shooting direction. Players could move freely, and obstacles like cacti and wagons provided cover. Each player had six bullets, and shots could bounce off the screen’s edges.
Western Gun was licensed to Midway for the United States as Gun Fight. Midway’s version used a microprocessor, a type of computer chip, for smoother animation. Nishikado’s original version allowed full movement, while Midway’s version limited players to their halves of the screen. Gun Fight sold 8,600 arcade cabinets in the United States, becoming the third-highest-grossing game of 1975 and the second-highest of 1976. It was later released on the Bally Astrocade console and other platforms, helping Japanese games gain popularity in the U.S.
Interceptor, a first-person combat flight simulator designed by Nishikado, was first shown in 1975. It was released in Japan in 1976 and Europe the same year. Players used an eight-way joystick to aim and shoot enemy aircraft that moved in pairs. The game used a technique called pseudo-3D object-scaling to create the illusion of 3D space, a method later used in games like Atari’s Night Driver (1976) and Namco’s Pole Position (1982).
In 1977, Nishikado…
Later career
Nishikado's later games for Taito included the racing video game Chase HQ II: Special Criminal Investigation in 1989, the side-scrolling shooter Darius II (Sagaia) in 1989 and Darius Twin in 1991, the platform game Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III in 1991, the SNES role-playing game Lufia & the Fortress of Doom in 1993, the beat 'em up Sonic Blast Man II in 1994, and the puzzle game Bust-A-Move 2 (Puzzle Bobble 2) in 1995.
In 1996, he left Taito to start his own company, Dreams. While Dreams was owned by Nishikado, the company developed games such as Bust-A-Move Millennium, published by Acclaim Entertainment in 2000.
Dreams also created Chase HQ: Secret Police, published by Metro3D for the Game Boy Color in 1999, the 3D eroge visual novel Dancing Cats, published by Illusion for the PC in 2000, Super Bust-A-Move (Super Puzzle Bobble), published by Taito for the PlayStation 2 in 2000, Rainbow Islands (Bubble Bobble 2) and Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder for the Game Boy Color in 2001, and the 2008 Nintendo DS version of Ys I & II. Nishikado helped develop Space Invaders Revolution, released by Taito in 2005, and was involved in creating Space Invaders Infinity Gene, released by Square Enix in 2008. Dreams also worked on the fighting game Battle Fantasia, released by Arc System Works in 2008.
As of 2013, Nishikado is no longer with Dreams and currently works for Taito as a technical advisor.