In 1961 the world’s first computer video game Space War was built at MIT. It ran on a PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1) computer which was 10 feet long, 5 feet wide, 6 feet tall and capable of storing ~9k of data. Programs were entered via punch tape (ticker tape with holes punched in it.) The monitor was a modernized WWII-style radar screen.

Just this week I started reading “What the Dornouse Said” a history of early West Coast computer pioneers and Space War is not overlooked. In fact game playing coders wrote the first multi-processor functionality so they could play the game even while a primary computation was running.

Last night while at an industry event at the Computer History Museum, I got to experience a history I never thought possible. Last year the museum restored a PDP-1 computer and once in a graert while they actually let people use it to - you guessed it - play Space War. Space War is a slower, more tactical, head-to-head game not dissimilar to Asteroids. There is a sun at the center of the screen which has gravitational pull which can slingshot and destroy your ship depending how fast your going and apparently no one has ever survived hitting hyper space more than 7 times due to memory limitations. Computing the inverse square law of gravity for both spaceships was so demanding on the machine bullets were renamed photon torpedos so they didn’t have to be subject to gravity.

If anything could be more amazing than this experience it would be if some of the original coders were there … and it took my little brain a full five minutes to accept that the older gentleman that I was playing with were in fact those people. I spoke with lead coder Steve “Slug” Russell for 5 minute as well Peter Samsom a coder that added realistic earth starscapes to the backdrop that moved across the skies.

The first video game I ever played was a coin-op Pong on a Grand Canyon trip in 1975 at age 5, 14 years after deep geeks had already been playing all night gaming sessions on a game that mere mortals would get to play until 1979 when Asteroids was released.