Spacewar!

The Spacewar!

Spacewar! is one of the first known video games. It was released in 1962. It was made by Steve Russell and others. In this game, the player has to shoot the other spaceships while flying around a star. The ships shoot missiles (rockets) which were unaffected (nothing happened) by the gravity. Each ship had only a few missiles and only a little bit of fuel. The hyperspace could be used to avoid being hit by a missile but the ship would reappear at a random place. The more the player used hyperspace, the bigger the chance that the spaceship would explode.

Spacewar! Media

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  Steve Russell, designer and main programmer of the initial version of Spacewar!, with a PDP-1 in 2007

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  Picture of gameplay of Spacewar! on a PDP-1. The moving spaceships and missiles leave trails behind them because the phosphors in the CRT monitor slowly fade after being lit.

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  Front panel of a PDP-1, featuring paper punched tapes in a holder, a punched tape reader, and the computer's control panel

• Video of Spacewar! gameplay

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

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  Spacewar! on the Computer History Museum's PDP-1 in 2007