24 Dec
2012
24 Dec
'12
5:58 a.m.
On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 11:41 PM, John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 09:16:55PM -0800, Rick Bensene
wrote:
Has anyone already mentioned Space Wars? This was an arcade version that I
don't think is directly descended from the real thing, but anyway it's a
similar game. It was rare but there was one at 1001 Plays (pinball/video
arcade in Cambridge MA), which probably isn't a coincidence (Wikipedia
says it
was developed by an MIT grad). It had various options for whether the sun
was
visible or how its gravity worked or whether the universe wrapped around
at the
edges of the screen or went on forever, which you'd set on a small keypad
(maybe six keys?) with keyboard-like full-stroke keys. It's weird what you
remember... Anyway it was a lot of fun.
John Wilson
D Bit
Actually, Space Wars is running the real thing. The game was released by
Cinemantronics and was designed by MIT grad Larry Rosenthal, who built a
TTL based computer that emulated the PDP-8 instruction set. He then
licensed the PDP-8 version of Spacewar from Russel and MIT, which is what
is running in Space Wars. Cheaper route then the previous coin-op game to
do that, Galaxy Game (which was running on actual PDP hardware with
terminal stations).
--
Marty