Spacewar was one of the first video games, programmed into a monstrous beast of a machine called the PDP-1. In Spacewar, players go after each other using lasers and missiles to blast their opponent’s ship apart. The code for Spacewar quickly spread through the early computing scene, laying the spiritual foundation for gaming as we know it today. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this historic game, the MIT Museum put together a simulation of the original Spacewar, complete with a mock PDP-1 to play it on. CNET has the story.
Spacewar also helps prove a point, namely, give people some spare time and a computer, they’ll build a game a on it. Making games is a natural instinct for people. That’s probably an important idea to understand.