In a press release sent out earlier this morning, Square Enix announced that they would be releasing a few retro games to play in Facebook and on messenger. Beginning tomorrow, Taito Corporation will be distributing Space Invaders and Araknoid to be played using “Instant Games” on Messenger and Facebook’s news feed.
Instant Games is a “new feature from Facebook that lets people play games within seconds on Messenger and Facebook News Feed. This helps people easily discover, share and play games instantly”. Instant Games will allow people to to challenge their friends instantly to play a game and see who gets the high score, all while being accused through messenger.
The first game, Space Invaders was originally designed, developed, and sold by Taito in 1978 and is part of the original Japanese video game culture. While also being granted admission into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in New York’s The Strong National Museum of Play. While Arkanoid on the other hand was created in 1986 and is considered by some to be a social phenomenon, being a beloved classic by people all around the world for many years.
Taito has been known to be innovative with original games and has brought classics back on numerous different platforms. Now, through the use of Facebook’s Instant Games, fans of these classics will have another chance to enjoy the reboots on a different platform, while new players will be able to enjoy the games in their new form. With over a billion people on Facebook, the opportunity for the game to be popular is strong; messenger alone has an estimated one billion users.