Spacewar!
Developer(s)	Steve Russell et al. A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual that creates Video games A developer may specialize in a certain video Steve "Slug" Russell is a programmer and computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, one of the earliest Videogames in 1961 with the
Platform(s)	PDP-1
Release date	1962
Genre(s)	Space combat simulation, Shoot 'em up
Mode(s)	Two players, simultaneously (only)

Spacewar! is one of the earliest known digital computer games. In Computing, a platform describes some sort of Hardware architecture or Software framework (including Application frameworks, that allows The PDP-1 ( P rogrammed D ata P rocessor- 1) was the first Computer in Digital Equipment Corporation 's Year 1962 ( MCMLXII) was a Common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. See also [[Game classification]] Video games are categorized into Genres based on their Gameplay interaction "Space combat" redirects here For hypothetical combat in space see Space warfare. A shoot-'em-up (also known as shmup) is a Video game genre of Shooter game in which the player controls a vehicle or character and fights large A personal computer Game (also known as a computer game or simply PC game) is a Video game played on a Personal computer, rather

Steve "Slug" Russell, Martin "Shag" Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen of the fictitious "Hingham Institute" conceived of the game in 1961, with the intent of implementing it on a DEC PDP-1 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Steve "Slug" Russell is a programmer and computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, one of the earliest Videogames in 1961 with the Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the Computer industry The PDP-1 ( P rogrammed D ata P rocessor- 1) was the first Computer in Digital Equipment Corporation 's After Alan Kotok obtained some sine and cosine routines from DEC, Russell began coding, and by February 1962 had produced his first version. This article is about Alan Kotok who was associate chair of W3C. Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the Computer industry It took approximately 200 hours of work to create the initial version. Additional features were developed by Dan Edwards, Peter Samson, and Graetz. Peter R Samson (born 1941 in Fitchburg Massachusetts) is an American Computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer Software

Gameplay

Steve Russell programmed the first version of Spacewar!

The basic gameplay of Spacewar! involves two armed spaceships called "the needle" and "the wedge" attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Steve "Slug" Russell is a programmer and computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, one of the earliest Videogames in 1961 with the A spacecraft is a Vehicle or machine designed for Spaceflight. In Physics, a gravity well is the Gravitational potential field around a massive body (a particular kind of Potential well) A star is a massive luminous ball of plasma. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the Energy on Earth The ships fired missiles which were unaffected by gravity (due to a lack of processing time). Each ship had a limited number of missiles and a limited supply of fuel. The hyperspace feature could be used as a last-ditch means to evade enemy missiles, but the reentry from hyperspace would occur at a random location and there was an increasing probability of the ship exploding with each use.

Each player controls one of the ships, and must attempt to simultaneously shoot at the other ship and avoid colliding with the star. Player controls included clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, thrust, fire, and hyperspace. Initially these were controlled using the front-panel test switches, with four switches for each player, but these proved to wear out very quickly under normal gameplay. A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal registers and memory. Most sites used custom control boxes wired into the same switches, although joysticks and other inputs were also used.

Options and features

Two players using the front-panel of a PDP-12 to play Spacewar! at the Vintage Computer Festival

Early versions of the game contained a randomly generated background starfield. The Vintage Computer Festival (VCF is an international event celebrating the history of Computing. However, the inaccuracy and lack of verisimilitude annoyed Samson, so he wrote a program based on real star charts that scrolled slowly: at any one time, 45% of the night sky was visible, every star down to the fifth magnitude. The program was called "Expensive Planetarium" (referring to the price of the PDP-1 computer), and was quickly incorporated into the main code. Expensive Planetarium is the star display written by Peter Samson for Spacewar!, one of the first Interactive computer games

There were several optional features controlled by sense switches on the console:

• no star (and thus no gravity)
• enable angular momentum
• disable background starfield
• the "Winds of Space"- a warping factor on trajectories that required the pilot to make careful adjustments every time he moved

Spacewar! was a fairly good overall diagnostic of the PDP-1 computer and Type 30 Precision CRT Display, so DEC apparently used it for factory testing and shipped PDP-1 computers to customers with the Spacewar! program already loaded into the core memory; this enabled field testing as when the PDP was fully set up, the field representative could simultaneously relax and do a final test of the PDP. A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal registers and memory. Magnetic core memory, or ferrite-core memory, is an early form of Random access Computer memory.

Spacewar! was extremely popular in the 1960s, and was widely ported to other systems. As it required a graphical display, most of the early ports were to other DEC platforms like the PDP-10 or PDP-11, or various CDC machines. The PDP-10 was a Mainframe computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC from the late 1960s on the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit Minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corp Control Data Corporation (CDC, was one of the pioneering Supercomputer firms

Spacewar! today

Vint Cerf playing Spacewar! on the Computer History Museum's PDP-1, ICANN meeting, 2007

As of May 2006, there is only one working PDP-1 known to be in existence, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf His contributions have been recognized repeatedly with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, and The Computer History Museum is a Museum established in 1996 in Mountain View California, when The Computer Museum (TCM in Boston) The PDP-1 ( P rogrammed D ata P rocessor- 1) was the first Computer in Digital Equipment Corporation 's ICANN (aɪkæn eye-can is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The Computer History Museum is a Museum established in 1996 in Mountain View California, when The Computer Museum (TCM in Boston) The computer and display were completely restored after two years of work, and Spacewar! is operational.

A second PDP-1 belonging to the Computer History Museum is currently on tour as part of the Game On exhibition, previously shown at the Barbican in London. However, this PDP-1 is not operational.

On May 15, 2006, the museum presented The Mouse That Roared: A PDP-1 Celebration Event. Events 1252 - Pope Innocent IV issues the Papal bull Ad exstirpanda, which authorizes but also limits the Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. The PDP-1 was demonstrated running Spacewar! as well as other programs, and members of the public were able to play the game using makeshift controllers. Further PDP-1 demonstrations will be scheduled on a biweekly basis on Saturday afternoons.

Most recently, Spacewar! code has been given out with Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express. Microsoft XNA (" X NA's N ot A cronymed" in other words XNA is not an acronym is a set of tools with a managed runtime environment provided by ^[1]

Other games inspired by Spacewar!

KSpaceDuel, a modern derivative included in many Linux distributions

The Spacewar! Java applet

Over the years, many computer games have been inspired by Spacewar!; some are known by the same name. Some are straightforward clones, but most have introduced additional variations to the game play, such as:

• various rates of acceleration
• various levels of gravity (even negative)
• missiles affected by gravity
• fuel (energy) regeneration over time
• shields

Arcade versions of Spacewar! were released as the Galaxy Game (1971), Computer Space by Nutting Associates (1971), and Space Wars by Cinematronics (1977), the last being the most commercially successful. The Galaxy Game is the earliest known coin-operated computer or video game. Computer Space is a video Arcade game released in November 1971 by Nutting Associates. Nutting Associates was an early Arcade game manufacturer from Mountain View California, formed in 1968 by Bill Nutting. Space Wars was the first Vector graphics Arcade game. It is based on Spacewar!, a PDP-1 program that might arguably be Cinematronics Incorporated was a pioneering Arcade game developer that had its heyday in the era of vector display games

The first networked version of this genre was Orbitwar (1974) by Silas Warner on the PLATO network. Silas Warner ( 18 August 1949 &ndash 3 March 2004) was a Game programmer and the first employee of Muse Software. PLATO was the first (circa 1960 on ILLIAC I) generalized Computer assisted instruction system It included all the features of the original Spacewar! with the addition of a Big Board where PLATO users would await challenges from each other to play.

Home versions have appeared for most computer and console systems, with some becoming quite elaborate, such as the Star Control series, introducing a wide variety of gameplay frameworks around the basic one-on-one combat system at its core. Star Control Famous Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict Volume IV is a Science fiction Computer game that was developed by Toys for Bob and published by Senko no Ronde can be described as a modern interpretation of Spacewar!, with a design heavily inspired by versus fighters such as Street Fighter II. is an Xbox 360 video game a port of the arcade fighter/shooter hybrid developed by G is a 1991 competitive fighting game by Capcom. It is widely credited with launching the fighting game genre into the mainstream and extending the life of the worldwide arcade The Escape Velocity series also owes its 2D inertial combat and navigation to Spacewar!. Escape Velocity is a Single-player Role-playing space-adventure Computer game series first introduced in 1996 by Ambrosia Software

Non-space themed variants with similar play (ie two players control a vehicle using similar controls - ie rotate left / rotate right / move forward / fire - and try to score by hitting their opponent with a missile, include Tank by Kee Games and Combat by Atari. Kee Games was an Arcade game manufacturer that released games from 1973 to 1978 Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972.

Although some accounts mistakenly identify Spacewar! as a motivation for the development of Unix, the game involved in that case was Space Travel. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer Space Travel was an early Computer game that simulated travel in the Solar system. ^[2]

Atari made two Spacewar games. Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. Space War was an Atari 2600 port that had many additional options added to it. Space War is a game for the Atari 2600, released in 1978. It is loosely based on Spacewar!, the famous 1962 computer The Atari 2600 is a Video game console released in October 1977 They were also in the works of an Atari Jaguar videogame that was named Spacewar 2000 as a major 3D update to the original. The Atari Jaguar is a Video game console, released by Atari Corporation in. It got cancelled when Atari abandoned the system's support after Fight for Life. Fight for Life is the title of a Video game developed and published by Atari for its ill-fated Jaguar system in 1996.

Earlier computer and video games

The first graphical computer game is believed to have been OXO (a Tic-tac-toe game), developed by A. OXO (also known as Noughts and Crosses) is a Tic-tac-toe Computer game made for the EDSAC computer in 1952. S. Douglas in 1952. William Higinbotham built Tennis for Two in 1958 using discrete analog hardware rather than a program for a digital computer. Tennis for Two was a game developed in 1958 on an Analog computer, which simulates a game of Tennis or Ping pong on an Oscilloscope

See also

• PDP-1
• Expensive Planetarium
• Alan Kotok
• Marvin Minsky
• Star Control

References

Notes

External links

• Spacewar! page at the Computer History Museum
• History of Spacewar!
• The original Spacewar! code running on PDP-1 emulator in Java
• Dmoz directory for Spacewar!
• 1up.com's article naming Spacewar! the most important video game ever made
• "Spacewar", a 1972 Rolling Stone article by Stewart Brand
• A 1972 Saga Magazine article about Spacewar!
• Computer and Video Game History describes Spacewar! and earlier video games such as A. S. Douglas' Tic-Tac-Toe and William Higinbotham's Tennis for Two