The creator of Space Invaders has a secret: he's rubbish at Space Invaders.
An interesting piece about the classic arcade video game over at The New Yorker includes a number of revelations about the business of defeating the invaders of space.
But chief among them is that the game's creator, Tomohiro Nishikado, is by his own admission "terrible at video games".
"I struggle to make it past Space Invaders' first level," he said.
Nishikado told the New Yorker that he had been forced to keep the secret for 35 years, ever since he made the game way back in 1978.
He also revealed that he was only able to make the game - and judge its difficulty curve - by feedback from players better than himself. He has never made it to the game's latter stages, let alone achieving a high score.
"Had it been left up to me, Space Invaders would have been a far easier game," he said.
The current world record for Space Invaders is held by Richie Knucklez, whose socre of 184,870 more than tripled the previous highest score when it was set in November 2011.
We recommend heading over to the New Yorker to read the full piece. But just remember, if you ever boot up Space Invaders for a blast of retro gaming fun and it turns out you can't control your tank with the same skill you remember, you're not alone. Neither can the guy who made it.