The First Real Video Game
The landmark game that eventually led to the launch of both the college mainframe tradition and the video arcade game was conceived at MIT in 1961 by a group of friends including Steve Russell, Wayne Witanen, and J. Martin Graetz, members of an organization called the Tech Model Railroad Club, interested in science fiction novels and movies. When MIT replaced its aging TX-0 mainframe computer with a DEC PDP-1, which had a built-in monitor, Russell, Witanen, and Graetz wanted to create a program that would test and tax the new computer’s capabilities and drew on their love of science fiction in deciding to make a game involving spaceships. Russell was primarily responsible for the design of the game, which was finished in 1962. Called Spacewar!, the final product featured two ships dubbed the "Wedge" and the "Needle" for their shapes that two players controlled and moved around the screen while firing torpedoes at each other until one ship was destroyed. The game became more complex as Russell’s friends continued to modify it, with the most important additions being accurate gravity effects centered around a sun and a hyperspace function that would teleport the ship to a random part of the screen. DEC decided to distribute Spacewar! as a demo program with each PDP computer it sold, exposing university students across the country to the game. After Spacewar!, there was little advancement in computer games for the rest of the 1960s. While it is likely that other innovative games were created during this time period, no reliable method existed to distribute them across the country, as there was little standardization across computers and no good way to port games from one system to another. Spacewar! itself would likely not have become a national phenomenon (in university computer labs at least) if not for DEC’s decision to bundle the game with its computers. In the end, these games disappeared into oblivion as old machines broke down and old tape was erased.
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