How Bright Is A Lumen

Gyruss games - Spacewar!


At the time I said a couple of games to be disputing what the first video game in history. However, there is one I've left in the pipeline, and this is before PONG ... I'm talking about a game called Spacewar!

Spacewar! consists of two ships that shoot missiles

This game was produced in 1962 by Steve "Slug" Russell for the DEC PDP-1 system in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], a digital computer produced in 1960.
consists of two spacecraft to be fired missiles at each other while must deal with the gravity of a star that is in your environment. The missiles are not affected by gravity [due to a limitation in processing capacity]. Both ships have limited fuel missiles. Could rotate in both directions, shoot, use the engine and a feature called hyperspace, allowing the ship disappear and reappear elsewhere on the screen, something useful to escape from enemy missiles ... peeeeero, you never know where will your ship, so it is as a last resort.
Slug and other characters, formed a sort of ad-hoc committee to decide what to do with the PDP-1 with the Type 30 tube screen [CRT], even before having it operational. This led to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe game, they need a good demonstration program to exploit the potential of this computer.
Russell was the chief programmer and his nickname "Slug" was given because it was dumb to do anything, even SpaceWar! At MIT they heard about the game and teased for it began, but that excuse did not have the necessary math routines for the moves. Alan Kotok got the routines, so the boy ran out of excuses and started to develop. After 200 hours of work finished the first version of the game.

Spacewar!
was created to test the capabilities of the PDP-1

The game proved useful for testing the overall performance of the PDP-1 and Type 30 tube display used [pictured left].
hit the market later arcade versions of the game, in 1971 Galaxy Game, Computer Recreations [may come to think of it the first commercial video games, and quite expensive, by the way], and in 1977 Space Wars Cinematronics with graphics display Vector [actually think that was the first to use this technology] and greater commercial success. In this release may be vestiges of what was then Atari ASTEROIDS, obviously not waste time watching the game Cinematronics stayed with all the success.
course and clones have also gone home versions of the game for various platforms, with additional details from the original game.
To date only one known functional PDP-1 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, after having been restored, and contains the Spacewar! working.