1971: Galaxy Game, Computer Space and Atari
Category: Arcade
Because of the success of the Spacewar! game, some students decide to build a public version of the game that people could play for money. Their arcade game is called Galaxy Game and is installed at the Tressider Union of Stanford University in September 1971. The machine is very expensive because it is based on a PDP-11/20 computer, building it cost about $20,000.
Two months later, the first commercially sold arcade video game is created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It is based on Spacewar! too, although it has been modified to let one single player battle against computer-controlled alien spaceships, and it is released only two months after Galaxy Game, in November 1971. It is called Computer Space and licensed to Nutting Associates who brings it to market in a nice, futuristic fibreglass cabinet. The game is not a huge success with the general public however, as the controls are too complicated for people who are just discovering what a videogame is. Still, it deserves a place in history for actually being the first commercially sold videogame ever.
Nolan and Ted make about $500 in licensing fees, which they rightfully think is not enough. So one year later they start a new business called Atari, with which they would soon produce their own, new game called Pong.
Watch it
See a short gameplay clip of an actual Computer Space machine:
Play it
As the Computer Space game is a discrete logic device without a microprocessor, it cannot be emulated on a computer, only simulated. Two such simulators for Windows can be downloaded from Computer Space Fan’s website:
Computer Space Simulator for Windows (1)
Computer Space Simulator for Windows (2)
1971 Computer Games
Category: Mainframe
Baseball
Don Daglow (today president and CEO of Stormfront Studios) writes his first computer game, a textual baseball simulation, on a DEC PDP-10 at Pomona College, where he is studying playwriting. This would not only be the beginning of Don’s long career in computer game development, but also a very influential title for decades of new sports games.
Star Trek
Developed by Mike Mayfield on an SDS Sigma 7, Star Trek was a completely unlicensed textgame of outer-space combat. Players would control their NCC-1701 through a number of quadrants and sectors using text commands, trying to destroy all Klingon ships in the area.
Try this page for an impressive amount of conversions and remakes, to find a version you can play on your computer.
The Oregon Trail
Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota together work on the idea to create an interactive computer program that can be used in history classes. The result is the first incarnation of The Oregon Trail which would go on the become arguably the most popular and beloved edutainment title ever made. However, the game would not reach a wider audience until 1974, when it was distributed via the state’s MECC educational network.
Over the years, there will be numerous remakes of the title. See the article on Wikipedia for more information.
1970: Highnoon (BASIC)
Category: Mainframe
Chris Gaylo develops a text-based, single-player shootout with a wild west theme at the Syosset High School in New York. Players have 4 rounds in their guns and are standing 100 paces from a crook named Black Bart. Player and computer take turns shooting, standing still, hiding, or advancing 1 to 10 steps, which increases both shooters’ chances to hit their opponent.
Printing out the BASIC source code of this early computer game takes up only 4 pages, dictated by the low memory of the computer it ran on. You can see scans of the original source code here.
Play it
An online implementation of the game can be played directly in your browser:
Click here to play Highnoon
1964: BASIC
Category: Home Computer
Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny develop the BASIC programming language (Beginners’ All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.) This simple language would enable a lot of people to design and write their own games, who otherwise probably wouldn’t have had the technical knowledge to do so. Games written in BASIC will be hugely popular during the home-computer revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when commercial software was scarce and the idea was that most people would write their own.
BASIC code is usually interpreted instead of compiled to machine code. This means that most games were distributed in source-code format, often through magazines and books, and were therefore easily distributable. That, and the fact that practically every system of the day came with a BASIC interpreter, meant that these games could really become immensely popular, and travel the world. And so they did.
1962: Spacewar! (DEC PDP-1)
Category: Mainframe
In 1960, the Digital Equipment Corporation DEC introduced their PDP-1 computer (Programmed Data Processor), a computer that would be a great influence for the development of hacker culture and computer games. As the first true minicomputer of the world, it was affordable for more than just the biggest universities and corporations. It was also the first commercial computer to be equipped with a CRT display, and controlled directly through a keyboard.
In 1961, a group of students and science-fiction fans at MIT started to program a very special, interactive demo for this new computer: Spacewar!, a spaceship duel with an amazing amount of detail. Featuring a previously unknown level of real-time action, two players each freely controlled a spaceship on a star background around a central star, which forced a strong gravitational pull on the ships. Players could rotate their ships, fire the afterburner, and shoot missiles. The goal was, of course, to annihilate the other player before getting hit by the opponent’s missiles or crashing into the sun. Various features like a correct display of the current real-world star constellation and a last-resort “hyperspace” button added to the game’s complexity and detail. DEC later decided to use Spacewar! to test new PDP-1 machines (because it allowed them to test most of the system’s functionality) and even shipped it with every sold computer, so Spacewar! was the first computer game to actually reach a certain level of popularity.
Play it
Fortunately, the MESS emulator has PDP-1 support and is perfectly capable of running the original Spacewar! code. The CRT display even simulates the “trailing effect”. You first need to download and set up the MESS multi-system emulator. It is open-source, and available for all major operating systems. You can get Windows binaries and the sources directly from the project’s website:
The Official MESS Homepage
Computer Space Fan has a .ZIP archive with the Spacewar! paper tape for download:
Spacewar! page on Computer Space Fan
Installing the emulator and running the PDP-1 emulation should be straight-forward, the same goes for loading the spacewar.rim file into the paper tape reader. To have the PDP-1 read in the code from the paper tape, you now need to press [Ctrl] + [Enter] (this refers to the standard keyboard configuration for MESS.) The lights should start blinking. This is going to take a while, but after a couple of moments the game should instantly start. Player 1 uses the A, S, D, and F keys to control the ship, player 2 uses the cursor keys.
