TITLE
The History of Spacewar!: The Best Waste of Time in the History of the Universe
AUTHOR
Bill Loguidice
PUBLICATION
Game Developer
YEAR
2009
ARTICLE TYPE
Book Excerpt
FROM THE ARTICLE
If you’re at all interested in the history of video games — as any reader of this site must surely be — then you’ve likely wondered what the first video game was like. What was, in fact, the first true video game to grace a screen?This question has long plagued those of us who’d write even semi-accurate histories of the medium. Many gamers (and even some writers!) think the honor belongs to Pong (see bonus chapter, “Pong: Avoid Missing Game to Start Industry”), which introduced video games to the masses in the 1970s.
However, Pong wasn’t even the first commercial arcade video game; it was preceded by Nolan Bushnell’s and Ted Dabney’s Computer Space for Nutting Associates, which had crashed on the launch pad in 1971.[1] As we’ll see, Computer Space was itself based on a much earlier video game called Spacewar!, which was introduced in playable form as early as February 1962. Even Spacewar! had its antecedents; two frequently brought up games are OXO (1952) and Tennis for Two (1958).
The short answer to the question of what came first is that we don’t know — yet. The problem is that we only know of the games that were successful enough to be remembered by those who played or created them, and at least some of those people have to be interested and willing to tell their stories (with some sort of supporting evidence). Who knows how many pioneering games might simply have been forgotten?
GAMES MENTIONED
Spacewar!
EXCERPTED FROM
Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time