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40th Anniversary of Video Games
CFN writes "According to this article in the New York Times (free registration...), this month marks the 40th anniversary of Spacewars, the very first video game ever created!
It's very interesting to consider how quickly the popularity of video games grew, because, essentially, Spacewars was spontaneously generated. I guess there is something about blinking lights, flashing colors, and tinny sound effects that just appeals to the soul." Unfortunately, there was no violence before 1952,
because we all know that violence is caused by video games.
Oh, and I had a great version of spacewars that I used
to play on a portable PC (Compaq with like a 5 inch green
screen and a wopping 4 mhz!) when I was short. I loved
that game.
...for small values of 1962...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Don't you mean 1962? I mean, if there's no violence before 40 years ago (1962), then it also holds that there's none before 50 years ago, but I still think you goofed there.
Arrr, it be the infamous pirate, No Beard Pete!
1952? Wouldn't that be 50 years?
I thought that was the first video game, created at Brookhaven Labs
Videogames were a novelty. Now-a-days it has become an essential part of every-day computing and has become a major infulence in harware design.
I remember telling my mom when I was a kid that videogames made me smarter... maybe she believes me now.
thelikesofwhich.com
* Unfortunately, there was no violence before 1952
* 40th Anniversary of Video Games
And I was thinking we live in the year 2002 right ?!
1952+40 != 2002 last time I check.
Or video games are 50 years old or even in 1962 there was no violence...
Unfortunately, there was no violence before 1952, because we all know that violence is caused by video games.
As opposed to fortunately?
Drink your coffee, Taco.
Good lord knows how many man hours have been spent in dimly lit rooms since video games hit the scene. WHat the hell did people usd to do? Work?
There was a Java emulator of the PDP-1 around, where you could play a game which was exactly like the orginal spacewars except for a few lines of code. The KDE game KSpaceDuel is also an acceptable alternative.
Not a typewriter
If your want to download it, read the README carefully.
This is cool, I am the first generation out from this and remeber reading the articles and seeing the picture in wonder.
:)
My father wrote a computer Golf game, we belive the first, in 1965, he had a couple of national news stories on it and I have a tape of the last show (nice shirt dad, and hair, and suit...lol).
It was fairly sophisticated taking into account wind and other varibles, could be played on any termina, (paper out back then) I actually spent many hours 'online' clicking though the old paper tape to load and run it on a timeshare (what a waste of then limited resources
I still have the cards, paper tape, and somewhere I think the latter magnetic tape it was transferred to eventually, What should I do with all this stuff, pretty boring in itself. Should I donate it somewhere , where ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
...does anyone have a version that will run on a modern machine? I'd love to while away a day setting the one ship into a permanent orbit around the planet and zapping it with the other. :)
Woot w00t w007.
It blows my mind to imagine how far gaming will go in the next 40 years. I'd say I can't wait, but I'm sure there will be so many interesting steps along the way. Who thinks 3D is overrated and we're gonna see some totally unexpected forms of games come out that aren't entirely headed toward VR/HoloGaming? :)
this may seem blasphemous (sp?) to say here...don't get me wrong...i'm 22 and i personally love my PS2 & my PC...but when i was a kid growing up, i never had a console, and i think i was better off for it...sure i eventually had a game boy for a period of time, and i had the old apple IIc, but they weren't a nintendo, genesis, etc...and i think i turned out better off because of it...instead of being constantly inside trying to figure out how to get to world 8-1 of mario brothers, i was outside playing sports, riding my bike, building tree forts...kids today spend to much time playing video games, and not enough time experiencing interactions with real people...at a summer camp that i went to, they used to have enough kids interested in baseball, basketball, soccer, that they could field leagues with 10+ teams...now they're lucky if they get a half dozen kids interested in playing those sports....instead, everyone wants to spend their beautiful summer day inside playing on computers or something of that nature (i.e. Magic card games...)...kids need to be more active, and i know that when i eventually have kids, i am planning on strongly regulated the amount of time that they spend laying video games...it makes me upset to see the state of today's kids...it's leading to the "wussification" of our youth...when i head stories such as this one that talk about banning dodge ball, i think it's upsurd...
so, in conclusion, to those of you with kids, and those of you who plan to have them...don't let your them spend 24/7 trying to beat that the latest version of final fantasy...have them go outside...have them use their imagination...have them interact with others...
oh well...that was just my rant....
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Googling for Spacewars turns up several results that say the game is from 1961, not '62. Is The Times Wrong?
How to celebrate it more than to actually mass-play Spacewars?
"A DEC PDP1 emulator running the original version of Spacewar! is online Here"
Willy: It's impossible for me to fire a pistol. If you'll check me medical records, you'll see I have a cripplin' arthritis in me index fingerrrs. Look at 'em! [holds them up] I got it from "Space Invaders" in 1977. Wiggum: Aw, yeah. That was a pretty addictive video game. Willy: [surprised] Video game?
doh
And I thought I was old-school cause the first game I ever played was Combat for the Atari 2600...stuff like this really puts your position as a gamer in perspective. Wow.
Let me ask you this...
Has the RPG really evolved beyond Ultima? Has the shooter really evolved beyond Galaxian? Has the puzzle really evolved beyond Tetris, or the simulation beyond SimCity?
Games may have changed in their outward appearance, but at their heart, they're all essentially the same.
-Evan
Uhm, this only makes sense to ravers... and again only when used with the analogy with pac-man and the notion that violent video games leads to violence.
I think you are at the wrong website
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
It's very interesting to consider how quickly the popularity of video games grew,
Wasn't it Pong, developed around 1973 that really launched the popularity of video games? The first 20 years seemed to be an expansion of a glacial sort.
Right here:w ww.nytimes.com/2002/02/28/technology/28SPAC.html
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://
I'm not karma-whoring, I've already hit the cap.
Yes and no. IIRC pong was the first home video game but spacewars was the first arcade video game.
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
according to this article, the creator of spacewar also wrote pong in 1970.....there's got to be a million copies/versions of pong out there for every platform avalible. including shockwave.
;-)
i'm not sure if you'd even need shockwave to emulate this, but is there some sort of a shockwave/consolve version of this game "spacewar"? the article speaks of an arcade version, is there a MAME rom of this? this seems interesting enough to relive. i'd count spacewar as "abandonware"
moox. for a new generation.
"Oh, and I had a great version of spacewars that I used to play on a portable PC (Compaq with like a 5 inch green screen and a wopping 4 mhz!) when I was short. I loved that game.
"But can it run Linux?"
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.)
from my blog at kisrael.com
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
All very low rez, but very cool. The head to head face to face competition with your opponent was particularly addictive. someone should do a higher rez version of this.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The first video game, as in the first known usage of a computer and video to play a game, was actually built by Willy Higinbotham in 1958.
See the link for the whole (fascinating) story - this man gave people the IDEA and the implementation for video games - it's time that he got his due share in video game history.
http://www.pong-story.com/thefirst.htm
>Unfortunately, there was no violence
>before 1952, because we all know that
>violence is caused by video games.
I think that you are wrong about that. EC Comics was driven out of business because they were charged with having the very same effect on children with their science fiction and horror comics.
Basically, there has always been assholes out there trying to control what other people can read and do.
Actually the first video game was a tennis game created by Willy Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory. It used an oscilloscope for the graphics output. Go here for a timeline on video games.
- pydron
I remember when I was growing up (a long long time ago...) when the Atari 2600 was released, and later the original NES. If it had been up to me, I probably would have been sitting at the TV all day long playing games; however, my parents wouldn't go for that. (Maybe they knew I needed to get outside occasionally, or maybe they just wanted to get rid of me for a few hours)
Anyway, I feel that was the best thing they could have done. I'll be the first one to testify as to how addicting video games can be, which is why even now I can rarely play a game for more than an hour or so without forcing myself to get up and walk around for a bit to detach. There's nothing wrong with getting into a game, but getting so involved that you don't get out and do other things is not good for you.
-Space for rent
One of the main events IMO was when games like Zelda, Dragon Warrior, and Final Fantasy came out. Most of the games before these were mainly score breakers. You played and played for hours to see if you could get the highest score or get to the last level. Games like Final Fantasy added a broad story element to the game and when you beat the game it finished the story. Ahhh thank god for RPGS. :)
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/lumingl
Most recently, I've done a Linux port of it, though the windows version is currently much better.
Enjoy : )
-Luminescent
Voxels were used a few years ago in the game Outcast Rather funky looking for it's time it was too.
50 + 1 - 1 = 49
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Just to play devil's advocate for a minute....
I, too, grew up in what seems to be the last generation before video games became such a "staple item" of childhood.
I never did enjoy competitive sports though, and constantly fought pressure from both peers and teachers to play them. Until the end of high-school (and even in college, to an extent), I constantly witnessed favoritism towards those who were good at sports, and saw schools much more concerned with the quality of their sports teams than about the quality of their education.
While it doesn't hurt to tell your kids to "get outside" once in a while, when it's a nice day and they're wasting it all indoors, I also don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that you don't see "leagues of 10+ teams" like you used to.
Maybe kids are finally a little more free to choose their own interests, and to develop their minds outside of the classroom? Only a select few of those who excel at sports in school ever get to make a living from it later. By contrast, how many will find an interest in gaming (and by extension, computers) useful for a future career?
(Lots of idiotic assumptions below)
Sure, it's fine for you Americans to yell at your kids to get them to go outside... But have you ever tried making a Tree Fort in -25C? Admittedly, it's nice during summer, and if we're lucky, it's on a Saturday.
This was actually taken from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I've forgotten which of the morally despicable collectivists says it, but it's not too far into it, at a party.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You're very confused... A quick timeline of the _most_ significant early games;
Tennis for Two - 1958
SpaceWar! - 1961/62
Magnavox Oddessey - 1968
Computer Space (Arcade Version of SpaceWar) - 1971
Pong - 1972
Atari Home Pong - 1974
Space Invaders - 1977
Apologies if I disremember some of the dates (can't quite remember when the Oddessey & arcade Pong units came out and I can't be bothered to go and look them up)
Cheers
Chris
i always thought pong was the first video game. i could be wrong of course.
I write code.
I was just going to post that URL and instead some AC-asshole did it... :(
Moderators, can you PLEASE give me some moderationpoints anyway?
Pretty pretty pretty please with sugar on the top?
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
...was that it was a fantastic game before keyboards became commodity junk. On the old true-blue IBM PC or XT, you got a keyboard sturdy enough to dent a car if you swung it hard enough. Now they disintegrate from the wind resistance.
My point being, in those days each key on the keyboard could be pressed independently and the computer could discern EXACTLY which keys were down or let up. Spacewar for PC (and myriad multiplayer games that came later, using a single keyboard) demanded good quality keyboards. My buddies used to sit in the computer lab and play it for hours, until they 'upgraded' machines. They had 'new style' 101 keyboards (88 was enough for me then), and a new strategy came about: hold down as many keys as you could so your opponent couldn't thrust or shoot; when they get frustrated because they're falling toward the sun, spin around and shoot as fast as possible.
Most Spacewar games became shoving matches after that.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
They compare Space Wars of 1962 with Allegiance of 2002, both space games. I'm sorry, but despite Allegiance's colorful graphics and amazing hardware requirements, Space Wars just looks cooler to play!
stuff |
An interesting book I just finished reading was The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven Kent. It goes all the way back... actually beginning with the precursors to pinball in the 19th century, and telling the story of video games and similar amusements as a narrative up to the year 2001. I thought it was well-written, and contains tons of quotes from firsthand sources.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
I believe Pong was the first successful commercialized game (1972) (created by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell after his unsuccessful Computer Space in 1971). A home TV version of Pong appeared around 1976. MIT Space War, the game cited here, ran on "The" PDP-1 a decade earlier. It was the coolest.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
You CAN take that too far, you know. I agree, kids spending 24/7 on video games aren't building any memories, aren't learning a lot, aren't developing themselves as well as they could. But don't completely cut them out. They're just one variety of toy - and kids need toys, they need to play. Hell, adults do too. ^_^ Ask any educator, play is a very important part of education and mental (and social) development. Though the case can be made that computer games aren't teaching social development. =P
Give kids books and bikes and "Final Fantasy" and a Rubix Cube and Little League and Lego and a musical instrument and a foreign language or three and more books and movies and dodgeball and music and crayons, and turn 'em loose! The sky's the limit as long as they have sufficient opportunities to learn and grow. =)
Of course, I'm biased. My dad's a hacker, and rather than spending our time playing catch, we spent it tinkering with DOS. =P But the memories are nice, all the same, and I learned a lot. Computer games are also a way to get kids interested in computers, which in today's and the future economy will be helpful to them in their education and the job market. Just something to keep in mind.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Wasn't the first video game Tennis for two as created for some 'public fair' by some MIT guys or something?
Im not sure of all the details but I am sure that it predated SpaceWar.
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
mine was 13... :^)
I remember the sweat dripping off my nose it was so intense. Or maybe it was just hot.
It doesn't seem to work on my browser. Good luck!
Free unix account: freeshell.org
sigh. Let's have that lesson again.
mHz = 'millihertz', 1 cycle every 1000 seconds.
MHz = 'megahertz', 1000000 cycles per second.
mhz = wrong, but at best millihertz.
Since ADB (Apple Desktop Bus, this is from before the golden age of USB) can only recognize two keys being held at once on a keyboard as read through GetKeys() (keyboard polling function on the Mac), it was always deemed better to capture keyDown, and more importantly, keyUp events and keep a map in the program. I'm nut sure how it works with USB or in the Linux/Wintel/x86 world but even with the two-key limit of GetKeys() I can still see every key press and every key release, i can hold down 10 keys at once and release the 4th and it will register.
If there is a way to apply such a technique under other OSs/platforms it would be well worth trying, for the sake of not killing your friend.
Blame poor programmers, not poor hardware. (actually in this case they both seem to be lacking but hey)
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
So, I am a PhD student and my work requires me to travel to Brookhaven Nat. Lab synchrotron occasionally. Anyway I went there with my boss, Dr. D, who appeared in Vogue for being one of the sexiest professional women ( ./ babe!).
Anyway the night watchman (guy there just in case the x-ray beam explodes), Bob or Bill was trying real hard to get in my boss's pants. So, he brought up the fact that his dad is Steve Russell. Then he proceeds to look up all these webpages dedicated to dad. Of course, now I have a tainted view of the situation, because he wouldn't leave from midnight to 8:00 am when the morning guy arrived.
It was interesting to here the story of the original game maker. Apparently the were just bored one day and had lots of CRT technology around.
Anyway that's my story. Sorry its not so cool.
-vossman
To the folks replying and requesting a mod-down for parent:
/. moderator access this morning. I read this post, and thought about modding it down, but have chosen not to. Why? It's obviously provocative, but it represents a genuine view that exists out there. I don't agree with drsquare's attitude, but I think we benefit far more from the potential discussion than from the satisfaction of immediately squashing his post.
I woke up with
If I were at a party, in a group of people, and this fellow were making his point, I wouldn't punch him in the face (preventing others from hearing him out) -- I'd just walk away. Which is what I'm going to do right now.
I somehow doubt that any game made today really "stretches" the computer as far as it can be stretched... The last game I saw that "stretched" the hardware was a breakout game (with mouse support) written for the amiga.... entirely in the boot sector of a floppy disk.
...instead of being constantly inside trying to figure out how to get to world 8-1 of mario brothers, i was outside playing sports, riding my bike, building tree forts...
If kids don't know how to get to World 8-1 of Super Mario Brothers, then IMHO they need to spend more time playing video games because they are clearly out of practice. Really, all one needs to do is go to the hidden warp zone at the end of World 1-2, warp to World 4, then use the first warp zone in World 4-2 to warp directly to World 8. (Note: Do not confuse this with the warp zone at the end of World 4-2, which will only take you to World 5 and is virtually useless; you're looking for the vine hidden in the blocks near the first elevator.)
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I thought Pong was the first "video" game.
Two lines for "paddles" and a square "ball" and you were set! You want to talk cheesy graphics? I still remember people waiting in line to play it. Ahhh youth...
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
I'm sure that NYT writers research their facts thoroughly (blah, blah), but according to Steven Levy's awesome Hackers , it was actually at the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) that everyone met.
We wouldn't want a reconstructionist history of hackerdom's finest moments, would we? (Is Eddie Bauer a sponsor of the Times?)
:wq
I was watching the History Channel a couple weeks back when on the show "History's Lost and Found" they showed the very first video game "Tennis for Two" developed at Brookhaven National Laboratories. I can't remember exactly what date the game was made but I'd trust History Channel to be correct over any news report, no matter how reputable the source.
Have we really gotten to the day where we are so reliant upon computers and other technology (Like calculators) that we can't do simple math in our heads??? Last I checked 2002 - 40 = 1962... C'mon people don't let the older generations be right about the lazy and dependant youth. DO THE MATH!
As for MAME, as arcade PONG can't be emulated, the best you can hope for is a simulation. This was included in MAME several (dozen) versions back, but removed by the project head, as he considered simulation not in tune with what MAME is about. I believe the code is still in there, and as MAME is open-sourced, you can just uncomment the relevant parts and compile it with PONG. There also are binaries floating around with this code still enabled. But as for 'officially'... sadly, it ain't there.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Well - at least my Pong console from the seventies
was one of the first, if not the first, for home use!
Still have the box and the instructions too!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
I'm 23 to give you an idea of the era I grew up in - I was weaned on Atari and followed through with all of the Nintendo's up to the current Gamecube.
I played *all* the time with my friends when I was a kid and that was a great source of fun and comraderie. That *is* what got me interested in computers and the reason that I'm a programmer now.
At the same time though, I played basketball, baseball, swam, and ran track/cross country (even ran cross country in college).
Bottom line: there's plenty of time for social interaction, sports and intellectual stimulation in the life of a kid - there's just so much free time. I actually credit video games in some part to my athletic coordination - my parents weren't that athletic, so it must've been the hand-eye coordination from hours upon hours of Nintendo!
The Red Pill
Doesn't this sound like a lot of amateur game programmers today? A lot of programmers in general (if they have some time) will just sit down and make something because they can. (And it's kinda fun, too.)
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.