Lost in Space
The History of Videogames returns from the ether after a long hiatus. I hope you had a very merry Christmas, an even better New Year and you’re having a great… February. Yes, it’s been that long. Don’t shun me.
In the first instalment of this editorial series, we looked back on the very precise origins of the modern videogame in a land unfamiliar and alien. From this primordial ooze of conceptual programs, computer mainframes and tourist traps, we push on to the 1960s, the decade of The Beatles, Martin Luther King, the Apollo Moon landing and free love, baby.
The year is 1962 and videogames as we recognise them are still a long way off. A whole decade, in fact. Those that are in existence are the novel playthings of the ultra-geekiest computer scientists, busying away in labs, formulating methods with which to test the capabilities of their massive mainframes. So, why are we still wallowing in this obscure era of proto-games? Simple, dear fellow: Spacewar!
Like the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, OXO and Tennis for Two, Spacewar! is one of those strange titles languishing in early videogame history limbo. Many claim it is the first true game, the ancestor of the multibillion dollar industry that exists today. Others disagree. However, there is no doubt whatsoever that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, was directly influenced in the making of the world’s first commercial arcade machine, Computer Space, by his own experience of Spacewar! as an undergraduate computer scientist. Of all these early games, then, Spacewar! is certainly the best candidate for the subtle but direct link between the primeval conceptual days of computer entertainment and the first shoots and blooms of a new industry.
PDP-1. Size 0 computing.
Child of the Times
The birth of Spacewar! very much depended on improvements in computer technology. At the turn of the 1960s, most mainframes were still vast affairs; they were loud, slow and usually had limited practical capabilities. It was virtually impossible to program anything truly impressive, for no machine could run anything more elaborate than a game of noughts-and-crosses. Change loomed on the horizon, however. Enter stage left Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) PDP-1 ‘minicomputer’, a much leaner cousin of its older, bulkier forebears. It boasted 9KB of memory, a 200KHz processor and paper-tape storage; most importantly, it was easily programmed. The PDP-1 was 1960’s pièce de résistance.
This breakthrough machine, when coupled to MIT’s internationally renowned computer science department, was a recipe for something very special indeed. In the early ‘60s, MIT was a buzzing hub of frontier computer research. There, the Hingham Institute’s burgeoning ‘hacker’ culture sought new and ingenious ways of pushing the institute’s number-crunching kit to the brink. This paved the way for a skilled and capable PDP-1 team headed by Steve Russell and J.M. Graetz to forge the first rivets of Spacewar!
According to Graetz, the team’s PDP-1 test program was built upon three foundational tenets: Firstly, the program had to use as many of the computer’s resources as possible and push it to the limit; secondly, it had to be interesting and, as much as possible, unique upon every run; thirdly, it had to be engaging and interactive; it had to be a game. In the summer of 1961, the idea of Spacewar! was conceived. Heavily influenced in design and gameplay by twentieth century sci-fi writer E.E. Smith, it was to be a multiplayer experience in which two spaceship-bound players would blast each other into oblivion with lasers or missiles in a bounded area. Though progress was slow after the initial conception phase, by January 1962, the first prototype had been painstakingly put together. It was Spacewar! and it worked. Just.
Spacewar! - More intense than it looks.
The Final Frontier
This first version of Spacewar! was not a polished affair. Displayed on the PDP-1’s CRT monitor in crude dot graphics, two players moved their needle-shaped ships with various levers and dials in a dance superimposed upon the blackness of space. Although it featured limited fuel and ammunition (novelties in themselves), Spacewar! lacked strategy, for the player with the fastest reflexes and quickest hands was bound to emerge the victor. Regardless, it was an outstanding piece of software and it attracted heaving crowds of curious students who spent hours locked in mortal combat amongst the stars.
By May 1962, Spacewar! was prodded, crunched and tweaked enough to be worthy of presentation at MIT’s annual Science Open House exhibition. Graphically, it was vastly improved. Team member Peter Samson coded a scrolling starfield into the game based on real star-charts; it was dubbed ‘Expensive Planetarium’. Added to the basic shooting mechanics was a centrally-located star which players could accelerate towards, using its gravity well for momentum. Death was guaranteed if one got too close. The second addition was ‘hyperspace’. Meant to function as a last-ditch method of escape when all hell had broken loose and the player felt himself hopelessly outmatched, a quick lever push launched his ship off-screen momentarily to reappear at a random location preferably inconvenient for the opponent. However, enthusiastic abuse of the hyperspace lever would lead to ship self-destruction. It was a gamble one needed to consider carefully. Spacewar! was beautifully refined.
Back when nerds dressed properly.
The Next Generation
Spacewar!’s success was immediately palpable, and not just amongst MIT’s hooked proto-gamers. DEC, too, was impressed. So impressed, in fact, that after 1962, each new PDP-1 came pre-loaded with a copy of Spacewar! Aside from being an incredibly fun game to play, it served as a reliable diagnostic tool of the machine’s capabilities. Later PDP models, the PDP-10 and PDP-11, continued the Spacewar! tradition, the latter delivering updated graphics thanks to its GT40 model’s vector display. Despite Steve Russell and his coding brothers-in-arms receiving nothing for their creation, they had spawned something incredible.
Considering computer technology in 1962, Spacewar! was a remarkably sophisticated and elegantly complex experience. It was leaps and bounds ahead of the likes of Tennis for Two and OXO. Indeed, the first commercially released videogames of the 1970s struggled to compare. Most did not. Spacewar! began a cultural phenomenon. Though its immediate appeal was limited, it had enough scope and ambition to compel the most enterprising computer scientists to plant the seeds of a new entertainment medium and a new art-form. Spacewar! was more than just a head-t0-head battle in the stars. It was a revolution.
<- Part I: The Primordial Ooze
