Spacewar! The First Video Game

Spacewar!, the first commercially available video game, was created way back in 1962. It all began at the "Hingham Institute Study Group on Space Warfare" in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In truth, the "Hingham Institute" was a group of three computer geek student friends in a cheap apartment on Hingham Street. The threesome consisted of Wayne Wiitanen, Martin "Shag" Graetz, and Stephen "Slug" Russell. All shared a love of grade-Z Japanese monster movies and pulp sci-fi writer E.E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman".

The Hingham Street creators

Wiitanen was a math wiz. Russell and Graetz worked in Harvard's Litauer Statistical Laboratory, where they crunched code and tested programs on a IBM 704 mainframe computer; and then they moved on to work on a new type of computer, the PDP-1, at MIT. Built by DEC, the PDP-1 operated at a much higher speed than the IBM mainframe at Harvard. It was also more one-on-one interactive. Programmers could play tic-tac-toe on it. As for Russell and Graetz, they visualized a "Doc Smith"-inspired two-person outer space shoot-out game on the PDP-1. They began working on the game with help from friends like Wayne Wiitanen, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, Allen Kotok, and Robert A. Saunders.

Kotok and Saunders put together the joystick box for Spacewar! This became the first use of joystick boxes for computer games. Peter Samson created the game's constellation-filled outer space background. Dan Edwards created the game's key strategic element, the gravity-pulling "Heavy Star."

Nolan Bushnell

When Spacewar! was completed in 1962, word of its achievement spread throughout computer academia, with more geeks on more campus computer labs adding and improving the game, as is the beauty of open source. Eventually, a programmer named Nolan Bushnell saw the game and then saw dollar signs.

In 1969, Bushnell (who would later found Atari and create the groundbreaking "Pong") found a way to port "Spacewar!" to a coin-operated stand-alone console and called the game "Computer Space." While it was a hit on college campuses with computer labs, the game's controls were too complex to be successful outside a college community.

Spacewar! in game history

When the Spacewar! creators saw someone else making a profit from their creation, there was initial irritation, then resignation. At the time, they knew that there were no copyright laws to protect such a new type of product.

Looking at Spacewar! today, it appears primitive, but there's no denying its legacy. You can even play Java versions of the game at different locations online.

SOURCES:

"Spacewar!", William Cassidy, Gamespy, URL: (http://archive.gamespy.com/halloffame/december02/spacewar/)

"Down the hyper-spatial tube", Jeffrey Fleming, Gamasutra, URL: (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1433/down_the_hyperspatial_tube_.php?print=1)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A656831