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Arcade Games Officially Over The Hill
evilandi writes: "Spacewar, the world's first arcade game, is 40 years old this summer. Read this article at the BBC and play Spacewar using a Java emulator- remember, this was a two-player only game, designed in 1961 when programmers had friends who were in the same room! Spacewar, which was similar to Asteroids, later shipped as standard software for the PDP-1." Well, maybe the first electronic arcade game ;) -- or can anyone cite counterexamples?
The "continue" option, once a curiosity and a gift to the player, is now routinely abused. It's lets the game designers slack off and make games impossible to become good at. "The player can just 'continue'" they'll say. And the new player dies in 20 seconds. Yah, there's a great way to hook new players.
And moreover, it is now the goal to force players to continue ad infinitum. Because entertainment is no longer the main reason for arcades, but rather, extracting money from player's wallets.
"powerups" are also an almost equally bad concept. Because when you die and lose your powerups, you are so hopelessly underpowered that you may as well walk away from the game at that point.
I fully expect to see the above two concepts combined someday. With a row of slots labeled with the various powerups which the player inserts quarters into to "buy" during game play.
Heres a Did You Know for anyone who didn't: Spacewar was based on a mathmatical accident?
A coder was attempting to draw a curved line on the screen of the TX-0. However, he misplaced a symbol in the code, and when the code was ran, it drew a circle. This was a surprise to the coder, to say the least. He had just discovered a new mathmatical process.
That code to draw the circle, ended up being the code that drew the "black-hole" in the center of the screen.
O.K it's a tenious link, but still.
I recall a story online about what a few computer researchers considered their first computer game. It consisted of loading the computer full of NOP statements (no-operation, i.e. don't do anything this clock cycle), pushing the "RUN" button to start the program, and seeing who could hit the "STOP" button the fastest. Why let things like total lack of UI ruin the opportunity for a good competition?
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
When I was Manager at The Computer Museum we had the code in the backroom on papertape. Since then I've seen it floating around for the PDP-1 emulators. It was in machine code so there was no source/compile/binary path.
As The Computer Museum (neé The Digital Computer Museum (Digital as in DEC)) had a full working PDP-1 out on permanent display for special occasions (or for Big Donors which is the same thing) we'd fire it all up & let folks play on the original hardware.
Speaking as not-a-big-gamer it was fun, challenging, impressively responsive. Invariably it was a crowd pleaser to both young and old alike. Considering that "glass teletypes" were a novelty when Spacewar debuted the vector-graphics & fluid motion were undoubtably a revalation to most folks.
Trivia:
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
So that's what the 'E' in all those e-businesses stands for. I would've done better in the NASDAQ if someone had told me sooner.
AlpineR
Actually it wasn't jammed, the coins fell into an empty milk carton, and the coins overflowed the carton, and landed on the PCB. The excellent Pong Story website has all the details.
Vector graphics. Gray on black. The controls were rotate left, rotate right, accelerate, and fire. Great game.
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Kennywood, outside of Pittsburgh, has few arcade stands. Not nearly as intense and amazing as Hershey was way back in '92, but - get this- they have a ORIGINAL WORKING SPACIE INVADERS. The case is old, the paint and instructions worn completely off by over twenty years of gaming. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, they have Dig Dug and a few others- still just a quarter.
Hell, I commute three hundred miles twice annually to access the only working Centipede machine I've ever found. One quarter on that will last you longer than half a dozen will on Tekken....
Shameless plug alert: If you're in the Bay Area, you can get the real thing in about six weeks:
CA Extreme, September 15-16, in San Jose. Two days, all the classic arcade machines you can play. There's even a bunch of guys with a laser projector hooked up to vector games... (C'mon, what geek didn't fantasize about being able to play Tempest using a low-lying cloud as a projection screen, FAA regs be damned ;-)
And under the same roof at the same time, Vintage Computer Fest 5.0. The name says it all, tons of stuff to dr00l over.
LaserMAME. Laser projection isn't as simple as it looks, and it's taken about 20 years for the tech to get cheap enough to filter down to the geek level, but it's here.
(For the simpler graphics of SpaceWar, it could probably be done for less than $1000 in used/reconditioned parts, and would make an excellent science project if you've got high-school age sproggen.)
My friends and I really enjoyed hanging out at the arcades. Then they started getting machines that forced you to keep adding quarters no matter what your skill was.
Do I look like a gambling addict?
Wait until the X-box becomes a subscription service.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Spacewar was written in machine code.
It's amazing what playing those old games brings back. If I fire up MAME with any given ROM, chances are I've seen the game and can tell you exactly what I was doing at that point in my life.
As an aside, the first game I was ever good at was Spy Hunter. Most of the time my quarter would last under a minute, but I could play Spy Hunter for upwards of an hour.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I will be able to visit this arcade in about two weeks. According to Hersheypark's website it's still there. Man I hope there are at least some of the old games there (I would LOVE to play Firefox but I here because of the cheap assed laser disc that was in it there may not be many working ones around).
I think MAME is a good thing and I would like to see some of teh manufacturers release the ROMS with no leagal issues attached so we can either download them, or pay a fee for a CD full of them. The arcade games of the past must be preserved and if they can't be preserved in the antique sense, we should at least preserve the code so they can be played on modern machines.
Gorkman
~=Keelor
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the 'minor' historical detail that a chap named Ken Thompson decided that writing something called UNIX and B would be a helpful in porting a more advanced version of Spacewar called Space Travel to a shiny new PDP, and ensure that it could be repeated easily each time a new machine was brought in.
Quotes from the linked article:
What it _does_ say about 1958 is: Willy Higinbotham is often recognized as inventing the first "video" style game. While working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958, Higinbotham turned an oscilloscope into a playable version of video tennis, which he called "Tennis for Two."
Now if you want more on Pong and Nolan, go see my other post ;)
it's in my head
Quotes:
it's in my head
Spacewar came before Pong, but wasn't very sucessful. Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari, ported Spacewar, but it wasn't too successful (it had *gasp* instructions), so he made a game simple enough for "a drunk in a bar" to play - Pong. See http://www.pong-story.com/atpong1.htm for more info.
Speaking of Spy Hunter, MS have left a clone of it, called Dev Hunter, as an Easter Egg in Excel 2000 (it's way more fun than that stupid flight simulator from 97). See, they're not totally evil : )
Gotta love assembly!! Makes you wonder why we ever bothered inventing higher level languages....
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
I was just reading the H1B thread, and the IT-People-Are-Not-Ageist argument was being bandied about. Then I see 40=over the hill here :)
:)
Nah, this isn't a kingdom run by 25 year olds
When I was punk kid of 20, I used to wonder why the old farts of 40 used to smile at us when we so rightously derided their gray hairs and hairy ears. Now I know why they smiled...
If they would have said something in response, it would have been this: "It's your turn REAL SOON, monkey boy. And I'm doing yer girlfriend."
I hope the yunguns here enjoy the scenery, 'cause it ain't gonna last long for them. I wonder, with how much aplomb will they face the end of their careers at 35?
I'm hoping for 150 meself.
At the end of may I wrote up spacewar for my kisrael.com quote/link blog:
Spacewar! is one of the grand-daddies of modern videogames, and a much deeper deathmatch than Pong. (I was amazed at how developed its deathmatch became when I read this old Rolling Stones article.) Written by MIT Hackers who were inspired by the space opera Fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. Someone has an the original game running on a PDP-1 emulator. There's a decent funny introduction at classicgaming.com and a more comprehensive set of Spacewar! links as well. (Possibly the most obvious sequal to Spacewar! was the brilliant Star Control series. The first game added 12 new types of ships, each with 2 unique weapons systems, and the second created a whole universe to support it. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.)
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When the aliens hit the yellow cellophane you knew you were in trouble!!
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At a highway rest stop the other week, I saw a brand spanking new Namco machine that had Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga in the same box! I thought that was cool and a great idea. It was the same old classic 8-bit arcade games that have been in arcades since the early 80's, not with revamped updated 3D 256-bit graphics.
I proceeded to play a (rather successful, by my standards) game of Galaga, and the WEIRDEST FREAKING THING HAPPENED when my last ship got destroyed.
Galaga asked me to CONTINUE!!! I am still sort of shaken up by this. They released the classic Galaga, but with a hack in it that lets you continue. How ODD! I mean, I've been playing Galaga for like 20 years now, and it never asked me to continue until last month. What the hell?
For a game dork like me, that's like looking up one day and noticing there are two suns or something.
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Yeah... and given the way he had it set up, it wasn't that different from what we'd understand as an arcade game today. It was apparently quite the tourist attraction in his lab.
/Brian
Actually, a Palm has about as much computational punch as a 386/25 or maybe a bit more. The chip is a derivative of the 68020 and I think it runs around 30mHz (or at least the first DragonBalls did).
/Brian
Does anyone have the source? Does it compile?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
No, they had multiple colors, they just had to glue colored cellophane onto the screen to achieve it.
I'm not making that up.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
A couple of bits of broken mirror, a pair of speakers to drive X-Y deflection, a laser pointer, and the side of a building...
Anyone? Anyone?
Pinball machines did not use electronics until the mid-late 1970s. Prior to that, the game logic was
implemented by electromechanical relays and switches only.
Williams experimented with electronics in the
early 1960s (1963?) but did not implement them due to cost.
There were some experimental electronic games in the 1974 period (with some work done by Dave Nutting of "Computer Space" fame).
The first commercial electronic pins controlled by a CPU appeared in the 1976-77 period. By 1979, all major US mfrs produced only electronic pinballs.
I seem to remember a story on the History Chanel about a tennis game played on Osciliscopes built out of stray tubes and solenoids. Happened around 1951 I think. Anyone have more info?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Shouldn't we now have Son Of Spacewar!
I'm serious.
I REALLY like the spacewar link, with the first picture of the "computer" and the text below "Creative Computing".
I guess it was a year or two before IBMs "Deep Computing".
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Why! Im my day we had to walk 5 miles through the snow to get to the arcade!
We didnt have these fancy-schmancy game cards or tokens...Our machines used quarters! And we liked it!
We didnt have these 3d-shoot-em-up, Parallax-scrolling, 60 fps, CD-sound, thingamabobs! We had two colors, BLACK and GREEN and the game was about as fun as getting your back waxed and WE LIKED IT!
There is no spork.
Interesting timing. A few months ago Wired published an article detailing the history of electronic arcade games. Pong was the first electronic arcade game with a coin slot. The guys who invented it found it was popular in their local bar, so they started charging a little per game.
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what am I since I still prefer good old pinball :)
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Pong Was the first, making it's debut in 1958 according to this article. I also saw the little History Channel's Lost and Found episode over the weekend, and while the guy that invented Pong, as a previous poster mentioned, didn't intend to do anything more than amuse the public, it does stand as the first publicly playable electronic game. Of course, no one charged money to play it, which may mean it doesn't count as the first 'arcade' game per se.
Incidentally, Spacewar is typically considered the first VIDEO game. As I'm sure lots of other people will point out, pinball had electronic components in it for a long time before 1961. And just for more useless trivia, the first HOME video game was the Oddyssey, built by Magnavox in 1972. So old, it didn't even have a microprocessor... just yards and yards of transistors and the like... those were the days all right!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
it gives me a warm feelimg inside to know that arcade games have been around all my life.
"And moreover, it is now the goal to force players to continue ad infinitum. Because entertainment is no longer the main reason for arcades, but rather, extracting money from player's wallets."
Ummm, since when was this *not* the case? I would have thought that coin-ops have always been designed to make money.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Maybe the first, fully, electronic arcade game. I'm sure pinball games and so forth had flashing lights in the 50's--after all, jukeboxes did.
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Shows how the games work and shows how the light gun works.
Play pong
Where did all the time go?
Darn, and here I was under the delusion that the first computer game was a socially engineered version of hide-n-go-seek developed by the Altiar loving Home-Brew club, otherwise known as "steal Bill's BASIC."
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
You know I was in a bar once and I noticed a old Street Fighter II game. So I thought I would play a game. I beat the game, I was shocked on how easily I did. I think the reason is I have play these Street Fighter games so long, the "original" was easy.
Some basic points here... 1) Spacewar! was the first _computer_video_game. There were video games that were earlier (Tennis for Two and possibly a Golf game from England). There were computer games that were earlier (tic-tac-toe and such). Spacewar! was certainly the first to put them together. 2) The first video arcade game, as such, was neither Computer Space or PONG. It was Galaxy Game. It was built to the tune of one machine, but ran for seven years straight. It claims the title by about one month. 3) Computer Space was the first arcade game to make it out to the public, and thus arguably claims the title for itself. Also the dates are so close one may be able to show this was earlier than GG, but that might be tough. Full details: www.gamesoffame.com Maury
On a side note, it's interesting that the first arcade game had something to do with:
- War
- Space
If you look at the date (1961), it all fits nicely into a cold war space race context, doesn't it?There is absolutely no reason to panic.
Typically the came Computer Space is considered the first "arcade" game because it set precedent for all future games: coin accepting, dedicated unit instead of multipurpose computer, display, controls, etc. Check www.klov.com or www.arcadehistory.com for more info, or if you'd like to chat about the classics hit #rgvac on EFNet. Also usenet rec.games.video.arcade.collecting