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Space Invaders is an arcade video game.
Is there any licensed material that explain from where they come from, why they want to invade us and why the only solution is to destroy them.
Bonus point for explaining why their strategy is to stay in formation while they descend.
From the wikipedia:
Nishikado drew inspiration for the aliens from H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds—he had watched the 1953 film adaptation as a child—and created initial bitmap images after the octopus-like aliens. Other alien designs were modeled after squids and crabs.
It doesn't seem like they have a backstory other than being chosen by the creator as the best design.
Just an interesting fact about the development of that game; the enemies originally were meant to be just one speed, but the processing power of computers at the time meant that when there were more of them to display the game actually ran slower. This meant that as the player destroyed the enemies, that the game got progressively faster as there was less processing to do.
The user manual for the (1980) Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders appears to be the first documented back-story for the aliens. In short, your task is to use your laser cannon to defend the Earth from an seemingly neverending alien fleet of invaders, bent on the invasion of Earth.
Each time you turn on SPACE INVADERS™ you will be at war with enemies from space who are threatening the earth. Your objective is to destroy these invaders by firing your "laser cannon." You must wipe out the invaders either before they reach the earth (bottom of the screen), or before they hit you three times with their "laser bombs."
Your long-term objective is to score as many points as possible. Points are scored each time you hit one of the SPACE INVADERS. They are worth different amounts of points, depending on their initial position on the screen.
To answer your specific questions, the space invaders come
from space
and while their motivation isn't spelled out, what's obvious from the subtext is that these invaders represent nothing less than an existential threat to the human race and must be stopped at all costs, even if that means your own death.
