5 Jul
2001
5 Jul
'01
2:17 p.m.
A question is: was SpaceWar on the PDP-1 the -first- video game? Clearly
there had been CRT output devices on computers before the PDP-1, but did
anybody write any games for them?
-Mike
On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
SPACEWAR: n. A space-combat simulation game, inspired
by
E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" books, in which two spaceships
duel around a central sun, shooting torpedoes at each other and
jumping through hyperspace. This game was first implemented on the
PDP-1 at MIT in 1960--61. SPACEWAR aficionados formed the core of
the early hacker culture at MIT. Nine years later, a descendant
of the game motivated Ken Thompson to build, in his spare time on a
scavenged PDP-7, the operating system that became {{UNIX}}. Less
than nine years after that, SPACEWAR was commercialized as one of
the first video games; descendants are still {feep}ing in video
arcades everywhere.