spacewar for other uses see spacewar disambiguation spacewar spacewar on a pdp1d evelopers steve russell publishers steve russell platformsp dp1 releasena 1962 genre sspace combat modes multiplayer spacewar is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by steve russell in collaboration with martin graetz and wayne wiitanen and programmed by russell with assistance from others including bob saunders and steve piner it was written for the newly installed dec pdp1 at the massachusetts institute of technology after its initial creation spacewar was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area including dan edwards and peter samson it was also spread to many of the few dozen primarily academic installations of the pdp1 computer making spacewar the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations the game features two spaceships the needle and the wedge engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star both ships are controlled by human players each ship has limited fuel for maneuvering and a limited number of torpedoes and the ships follow newtonian physics remaining in motion even when the player is not accelerating flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a common tactic ships are destroyed when hit by a torpedo or colliding with the star at any time the player can engage a hyperspace feature to move to a new random location on the screen though each use has an increasing chance of destroying the ship instead the game was initially controlled with switches on the pdp1 though alan kotok and bob saunders built an early gamepad to reduce the difficulty and awkwardness of controlling the game spacewar is one of the most important and influential games in the early history of video games it was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely ported to other computer systems at the time it has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for pdp1 emulators it directly inspired many other electronic games such as the first commercial arcade video games galaxy game and computer space 1971 and later games such as asteroids 1979 in 2007 spacewar was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time which formed the start of the game canon at the library of congress background steve russell designer and main programmer of the initial version of spacewar in 2007 during the 1950s various computer games were created in the context of academic computer and programming research and for demonstrations of computing power especially after the introduction later in the decade of smaller and faster computers on which programs could be created and run in real time as opposed to being executed in batches a few programs however while used to showcase the power of the computer they ran on were also intended as entertainment products these were generally created by undergraduate and graduate students and university employees such as at the massachusetts institute of technology mit where they were allowed on occasion to develop programs for the tx0 experimental computer in the fall of 1961 a digital equipment corporation dec pdp1 minicomputer was installed in the kludge room of the mit electrical engineering department to complement the older tx0 and even before its arrival a group of students and university employees had been brainstorming ideas for programs that would demonstrate the new computers capabilities in a compelling way three of themsteve russell then an employee at harvard university and a former research assistant at mit martin graetz a research assistant and former student at mit and wayne wiitanen a research assistant at harvard and former employee and student at mitreferring to their collaboration as the hingham institute as graetz and wiitanen were living in a tenement building on hingham street in cambridge massachusetts came up with the idea for spacewar gameplay recreation of spacewar in java the gameplay of spacewar involves two monochrome spaceships called the needle and the wedge each controlled by a player attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering on a twodimensional plane in the gravity well of a star set against the backdrop of a starfield each player controls one of the ships and must attempt to shoot down the other ship while avoiding a collision with the star flying near the star can provide a gravity assist to the player at the risk of misjudging the trajectory and falling into the star if a ship moves past one edge of the screen it reappears on the other side in a wraparound effect a hyperspace feature or panic button can be used as a lastditch means to evade enemy torpedoes by moving the players ship to another location on the screen after disappearing for a few seconds but the reentry from hyperspace occurs at a random location and in some versions there is an increasing probability of the ship exploding with each use player controls include clockwise and counterclockwise rotation forward thrust firing torpedoes and hyperspace development vint cerf playing spacewar on the computer history museums pdp1 at a 2007 icann meeting in the fall of 1961 while discussing ideas for a program for the pdp1 russell had finished reading the lensman series by e e doc smith and thought the stories would make a good basis for the program his heroes had a strong tendency to get pursued by the villain across the galaxy and have to invent their way out of their problem while they were being pursued that sort of action was the thing that suggested spacewar he had some very glowing descriptions of spaceship encounters and space fleet maneuvers for the first few months after its installation the pdp1 programming community at mit focused on simpler programs to work out how to create software for the computer excerpt from the expensive planetarium star charts russell had a program with a movable dot by january 1962 and an early operational game with rotatable spaceships by february spacewar on the computer history museums pdp1 in 2007 the initial version of the game also did not include the central star gravity well or the hyperspace feature they were written by mit graduate student and tmrc member dan edwards and graetz respectively to add elements of a strategy to what initially was a shooter game of pure reflexes the initial version of the hyperspace function was limited to three jumps but carried no risk save possibly reentering the game in a dangerous position later versions removed the limit but added the increasing risk of destroying the ship instead of moving it additionally during this development period kotok and saunders created the gamepads for the game beginning in the summer of 1962 and continuing over the next few years members of the pdp1 programming community at mit including russell and the other hingham institute members began to spread out to other schools and employers such as stanford university and dec and as they did they spread the game to other universities and institutions with a pdp1 computer legacy two users playing spacewar on a pdp12 at the vintage computer festival spacewar was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time before migrating to early microcomputer systems in the 1970s in the early 1970s spacewar migrated from large computer systems to a commercial setting as it formed the basis for the first two coinoperated video games while playing spacewar at stanford sometime between 1966 and 1969 college student hugh tuck remarked that a coinoperated version of the game would be very successful while the high price of a minicomputer prevented such a game from being feasible then in 1971 tuck and bill pitts created a prototype coinoperated computer game galaxy game with a us20000 pdp11 around the same time a second prototype coinoperated game based on spacewar computer space was developed by nolan bushnell and ted dabney which would become the first commercially sold arcade video game and the first widely available video game of any kind byte magazine published an assembly language version of spacewar in 1977 that ran on the altair 8800 and other intel 8080based microcomputers using an oscilloscope as the graphical display and a lookup table for orbits in addition to galaxy game and computer space numerous other games have been directly inspired by spacewar on march 12 2007 the new york times reported that spacewar was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time the socalled game canon which were proposed to be archived in the library of congress notes bell c gordon mudge j craig mcnamara john e 1978 computer engineering a dec view of hardware systems design digital press isbn9780932376008 demaria rusel wilson johnny l december 2003 high score the illustrated history of electronic games 2nd ed mcgraw hillosborne isbn9780072231724 donovan tristan 20100420 replay the history of video games yellow ant isbn9780956507204 levy steven 1984 hackers heroes of the computer revolution doubleday isbn9780385191951 rutter jason bryce jo 20060509 understanding digital games sage publications isbn9781412900348 wolf mark j p 20120605 before the crash early video game history wayne state university press isbn9780814334508 guinness world records 2017 gamers edition guinness world records 20160830 isbn9781910561409 spacewar page at the computer history museum the original spacewar source code running on pdp1 emulator in java and in javascript spacewar for the pdp1 at the internet archives historical software collection vteearly history of video gamesanalog and lightbulb games 19471951 cathoderay tube amusement device bertie the brain nimrod interactive visual games 19521959 oxo tennis for two digital computer games 19601971 early mainframe games spacewar marienbad hamurabi space travel first arcade games 19701971 computer space galaxy game 