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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!
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........
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
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?
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.
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
...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.