40th Anniversary of Video Games 222
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.
40th anniversary... (Score:5, Funny)
1952? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:1952? (Score:1)
Re:1952? (Score:1)
Re:1952? (Score:3, Funny)
I think violence was invented around the same time as color. I wonder if there's a connection?
-Mezz
Re:1952? (Score:4, Interesting)
>
> I think violence was invented around the same time as color. I wonder if there's a connection?
Of course there's a connection. Back then, all the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black.
Rendered in black-and-white, shattering the Lone Ranger's cranium with a railgun would make it look like he was a bad guy. And chainsawing a bad guy, well, how could you tell the difference between the gibs soaking into his shirt and what he was already wearing?
In black and white, the gibs look like crude oil, or little globs of asphalt. Lame. There was no point to violence until we had color to see the gibs!
Back on topic, the thing I liked most about Cinematronics' arcade release of Spacewar was that you got gibs. Sure, they were just little bent vectors indicating damaged spaceships, but hey, it was all we had, and we liked it!
Come to think of it, the thing that amazed me about Williams' Defender wasn't just a control panel from hell (5 buttons and a joystick), but the beautiful explosions - when you blew up the bad guys, you got to see chunks of their ships flying all over the screen, with great "skizz-chungachungcasplorrzzzz" sound effects to go with it. Nothin' like smart-bombing four pods and huntin' down the stragglers...)
Final note on gibs and video games - Williams/Midway's 1990s-era homage to Defender and Stargate was called Strike Force. Awesome soundtrack and spectacular effects when blowing up the aliens. If you enjoyed Defender and can no longer find Strike Force in the arcades, you owe it to yourself to find it emulated.
Re:1952? (Score:2, Insightful)
You should read Marvin's [oldmanmurray.com] History of the Human Experiment [amazon.com]. It's a breath of fresh air next to the popularized bunk taught in our public schools nowadays.
Notable milestones:
Just checked the amazon link, and realized that the book actually won't be published for another forty years. Still, definitely worth a read.
Re:1952? (Score:1)
I think they spelled tinny correctly. Even on /. tiny is not an adjective I'd expect to be used to describe sounds. Tinny however pertains to its lack of depth across the sound spectrum. More a ping than a full blooded KERBOOM.
I realise I leave myself open to YHBT YHL, or "have you no sense of humour?" But I'm fed up today, so I'm being a pedant.
1952? (Score:1)
tennis for two (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:tennis for two (Score:2)
Re:tennis for two (Score:2, Informative)
Back Then (Score:1)
I remember telling my mom when I was a kid that videogames made me smarter... maybe she believes me now.
Re:Back Then (Score:2, Insightful)
Knock over everything, you never know what will hide a power-ups.
Pick up everything that isn't nailed down, its bound to be useful later. Horde
Save often.
Don't just look straight ahead, look up, down, and all around.
Use the right tool for the job
Use items together to make new items
exploit your opponents weakness
Learn from your opponent's stratagy
Don't give up
Someone did his math wrong... (Score:1, Redundant)
* 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? (Score:4, Funny)
As opposed to fortunately?
Drink your coffee, Taco.
Re:Unfortunately? (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunately? (Score:1)
Man hours spent (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Man hours spent (Score:1)
Re:Man hours spent (Score:1)
Let us be careful and not speculate with such statistics. Sure video games are all the rage today. But remember, the same things happened with the Disco craze back in the 70s and look how popular all of that stuff is today. </joke>
Similar games (Score:4, Informative)
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 [azweb.de] is also an acceptable alternative.
Spacewar running in a Java emulator (Score:5, Informative)
If your want to download it, read the README carefully.
Re:Spacewar running in a Java emulator (Score:1)
Of course, I have never played SpaceWar! before so maybe that was the game designer's intent. Pretty impressive for the first video game ever, though.
Re:Spacewar running in a Java emulator (Score:2)
Spacewar! is in the public domain, but this credit paragraph must accompany all distributed versions of the program.
However, it comes with a typo:
We typed in in again...
According to the requirement, we must pass it on with the typo, forever.....gotta be careful when writing similar README.
Cool, computer golf anniversery coming soon too (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ?
Re:Cool, computer golf anniversery coming soon too (Score:2)
Re:Cool, computer golf anniversery coming soon too (Score:2)
Re:Cool, computer golf anniversery coming soon too (Score:1)
Re:Cool, computer golf anniversery coming soon too (Score:2)
GPL it and set up a page with all of the things you've got (history, the video, etc.). Search engines will pick it up, and you never know who will find it while investigating history. (I love doing that kind of thing and finding a page about something like that would make my day. I'll bet a lot of others feel the same way, too.)
Re:Cool, computer golf anniversery coming soon too (Score:2)
The second is (i dont remerber at the moment) the system it was meant to run on is long sice extinct, as well as (im thinking it was fortan, about 90% sure) has to be significantly different than it was in 65.
Making most of the code obsolete, I tried, (back when I could still read tape) to convert it over to run on my CPM systems, but gave up deeming a rewrite was neccesary.
If it still had value (other than antiquity value) I would GPL it. But alas I cannot read cards or tape and have no desire to decode cards by hand, been there done that.
That's pretty cool, but... (Score:2)
Re:That's pretty cool, but... (Score:2)
Re:That's pretty cool, but... (Score:1)
Extrapolating (Score:1)
Re:Extrapolating (Score:1)
Take volume graphics and voxels, for example. At a conference (I think it was early 2001), I watched a presentation showing how a team had put together a video with the most accurately rendered nebula I'd ever seen using volume graphics and voxels (run a Google search). Amazing detail. The only drawback? Computational cost. But PCs being what they are, and GPUs having come a long way... That's just one of the techs I see being included in games soon.
What about computer vision, which is more my kind of field? Interactive games, anyone? We know when you smile, we know when you growl, we know when you frown in thought. Not that the latter will have too much application in UT-style games, but...
My point is basically to agree with the original poster: Many new technologies will grace our games without causing a huge paradigm shift (i.e. a change from the mouse/keyboard/screen/joystick setup).
Re:Extrapolating (Score:1)
kids today play too many video games... (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:1)
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You know, either that or we're conditioning ourselves to be obese slugs that never have to leave our warrens, just being constantly plugged into Hyper-Reality (TM) and having our nutrition and good feelings piped in intravenously.
mmmmmm.... intravenous feel-good
Agreed (Score:1)
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.
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:1)
I've seen others who were the sports players and jocks working the counter at the local mini-mart. They are still single and still acting like they are in high school. I'm married with my first kid on it's way.
Basically what I'm getting at is that no matter what you do with your life, if it's what you really want, and you work at it and you are HAPPY (thats the Key IMO) with how things are going, there is no reason to say "Oh My God! Look at that guy playing Football out there, He is going to be way better than me because I enjoy playing Madden 2003 more than I enjoy playing Hold Icepack on knee for 5 hours!"
As I was told by my parents, life is what you make of it. There is no one to blame but yourself if you find yourself in a place you are unhappy being.
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:1)
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:2, Interesting)
Myself, I spent a lot of time with my friends playing video games when I was younger. Since there were only 2 controllers (NES anyone?), you had to take turns and there was a lot of interaction with other kids when you didn't have a controller in your hands.
If you go back even further, I remember playing Warlords on the Atari 2600 with my family probably once a month and playing games on the good ol' C64 with my aunts and uncles at my Grandparents house every Sunday.
That's not to say I didn't go outside and play on my swing set with my friends (*nostalgia for the swing set*) but whether online or offline, practically my whole life with the exception of school has been one big game.
Now I'm much more mature and I play Live Action Roleplaying games. Wait...
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:2)
I'm 30, married with 2 kids and I've been a gamer since about 1980. I remember with much love the time I spent from, say, 1983 to 1986 on my C64 and Atari 130XE. I had a bunk bed and the computer was on the bottom bunk, closed in with a Transformers blanket.
I came home from school at 3:30, got on-line (at 1200 baud) and stayed on until midnight. I took some breaks for friends and food, but this was my life as a junior higher with a computer.
Now, I have a good-paying (for this market) job involving a little programming, web design and report/data analysis. I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for the 2600, NES, or C64... Of course, now I don't get 7 hours a day to play, but I do get about 2.
GTRacer
- The family that games together...
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:1)
The main points of my post were:
Basically what I'm getting at is that no matter what you do with your life, if it's what you really want, and you work at it and you are HAPPY
and:
As I was told by my parents, life is what you make of it. There is no one to blame but yourself if you find yourself in a place you are unhappy being.
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:2)
>
> All that time *not* playing sports with other kids as a child means that you didn't realise that saying things like this makes you sound like a pompous prick.
The funniest part is my gut reaction to his post, which is this:
"You poor bastard."
Now it's my turn to be an even more pompous prick:
I've also seen the jocks. But most aren't single. Remember how they always "got the girls"? Most of 'em married early and have already knocked out a kid or two by now. Because of that, they couldn't take the time off to go to college. Because of they didn't go to college, they work at Wal-Mart. And every day isn't like high school to them - it's a hard struggle to make ends meet. The pay sucks. They live day-to-day knowing that their boss can come down on them harder than their most-hated high school teacher ever did. They have no savings. Their kids will probably never make it to college, let alone through it.
Me? I'm in arrogant bastard heaven. I'm out-earning my parents, I'm still single, and will never have kids. Guess what? I'm not much older than the original poster is, and I'm within striking distance of retirement. I get up, do some good work (modulo wasting my employer's time by posting to Slashdot!), come home, cook something wonderful, geek out at the computer, play some video games, listen to some music, read USENET, whack spammer nads, and call it a night.
It ain't the jocks who are single and acting like they're still in high school. It's the geeks. And some of us love it. Because we've earned enough money to get away with being pompous pricks ;-)
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:1)
Re: Eh, sports are overrated too..... (Score:2)
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?
It's OK for you... (Score:2, Funny)
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.
OT: your sig (Score:2)
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.
Re: Imagination (Score:2)
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
Nonsense (Score:3, Funny)
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.)
Re:kids today play too many video games... (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, you must've had the Tengen version (for NES), not Nintendo's version. I envy you.
--Joe1962 or one year older? (Score:2, Interesting)
Googling [google.nl] for Spacewars turns up several results that say the game is from 1961, not '62. Is The Times Wrong?
Download your Spacewars (Score:2, Informative)
"A DEC PDP1 emulator running the original version of Spacewar! is online Here [mit.edu]"
Ach! (Score:5, Funny)
Just like there was no cancer before cigarettes (Score:1)
Re:Just like there was no cancer before cigarettes (Score:1)
Cancer is a disease - and cigarettes help it along.
Puts stuff in perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
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
A bit if an exaggeration (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't it Pong [klov.com], developed around 1973 that really launched the popularity of video games? The first 20 years seemed to be an expansion of a glacial sort.
Re:A bit if an exaggeration (Score:2)
Pong was the first video game that got widespread distrobution in arcades, bars, malls, etc - which exposed people to a new gaming experience. Bushnell's earlier game, Computer Space (?), with its weird fiberglass case, while earlier, didn't get as much distribution. (Although one of teh arcades at Ohio State had one, and sucked many of my quarters).
Spacewar, otoh, required access to a crt and a copy of teh deck to run it. We had a version that ran on an IBM mainfranme (370?) that you could use to run teh ganme - as long as you didn't get caught by the system operator - after all, computers were SERIOUS tools, far too IMPORTANT to waste precious CPU time on games. Star Trek was another popular game - that could be played on teletypes or screens. It used an 8x8 matrix and ASCII graphics, but was fun none the less. Again, you had to avoid be caught by the "games police" who would even go to remote terminals to catch students playing games (although the advent of dial up access, even pre-PC days helped, for those lucky enough to have a modem and display terminal). Once we discovered that even a penny in an account would let you log in and play until you disconnected, we started marathon trek sessions with rotating players. It was also kind of net to log on afterward and see your account balance was $-10,514.34.
I'd say Spacewar and Star Trek were very influential in creating interest in video games, while Pong brought them to the masses.
NYT article without the reg. screen (Score:3, Informative)
http://college.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://
I'm not karma-whoring, I've already hit the cap.
pong shockwave flash.... (Score:2)
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 [slashdot.org]"
Re:pong shockwave flash.... (Score:2)
There certainly are. But one interesting thing about Pong is that it was an analogue circuit, not a digital computer, so to "emulate" it you'd need to model the electronics, rather than simply (hah!) translate an instruction set as you would when emulating a computer.
I don't know of any Pong simulators, only clones.
MAME Pong (Score:2)
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.
Typical /. reader's angle (Score:1, Redundant)
"But can it run Linux?"
Re:Typical /. reader's angle (Score:1)
Linux? I remember the day I loaded windows 3.0 on it.
It was really more of a "luggable" than a "portable," though. It was from the It-has-a-handle-therefore-it's-portable school of thought, I guess.
spacewar links ahoy (Score:5, Informative)
from my blog at kisrael.com [kisrael.com]
Re:spacewar links ahoy (Score:2)
Re:spacewar links ahoy (Score:2)
Re:spacewar links ahoy (Score:2)
Re:spacewar links ahoy (Score:1)
Re:spacewar links ahoy (Score:2)
Favorite old video games (Score:2)
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.
Re:Favorite old video games (Score:1)
it's called BZflag and is the best tank - kill everyone you can game ever made.
oh and it's free, runs on everything but a MAC, and you can get it's sourcecode.
bzflag.sourceforge.net -- go get it. it's fun.
Re:Favorite old video games (Score:2)
In a way that was better because everyone could see where everyone was from the start. No hiding possible at all. Merely a matter of taste, but it provided a lot of fun.
Not the First Video Game (Score:2, Informative)
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
Earlier Then 1952 (Score:1)
>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.
Games with endings (Score:1)
Re:Games with endings (Score:1)
Two anniversaries are being celebrated here... (Score:1)
A good article on the origin of Spacewar. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A good article on the origin of Spacewar. (Score:1)
Yay! (Score:3, Funny)
Remember playing the stand-up arcade version (Score:2)
Arcade stand up version with green raster graphics.
Some goof beside me getting ready to get smacked.
He moved his ship in circles firing.
I steadied my aim without a word and -BAM!-
My first frag.
Old-school like writing basic on a Trash 80.
Yeah, I wonder if this is how people are going to talk about their first game of Quake or the days playing Evercrack twenty years from now.
_______________________________________________
Re:Remember playing the stand-up arcade version (Score:2)
ROFLMAO. Your comment on green rasters reminded me of green vectors.
My funniest public frag was a game called "Cyber Sled", a first-person tank game with spiffy 3D graphics that often appeared as a head-to-head game.
I grew up on "Battlezone", which used almost the same control interface. And which probably made me the oldest person in the arcade.
I'd just finished watching some kid half my age beat two or three other players, and I figured I'd try my luck. The controls felt almost exactly like Battlezone's, and within seconds, I became one with my tank.
To make a long story short, I not only fragged his ass, I fragged it consistently for the duration of our credits. I almost felt sorry for him as I strafed around a corner and lobbed that last missile up his azz. Most of the time, he had no idea what hit him ;)
Everything I needed to know in life I learned while playing Battlezone.
Coleco Mini-arcades. (Score:2)
Re:Coleco Mini-arcades. (Score:2)
The Times has it wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
His game was a big hit with everyone that visited the labs. The following year, Willy used a 15 inch screen to demonstrate his game. He never thought of any commerical uses of his invention and it never left the lab. Interesting to note that if he did apply for a patent, it would have been owned by the US Government.
Space Wars in the original (Score:3, Informative)
However there was a darn good game, astonishing for its era.
For those that busy downloading Java PDP-1 emulators and seeing what all of the hoopla was about imagine for a minute it is back in 1962:
* I loaded & played Space Wars at the former "The Computer Museum" in Boston Mass. USA where I was staff in '86-'87. Having grown out of DEC's in-house museum they had a working PDP-1 that was fired up occasionially for special occasions and large doners.
The problem with Spacewar (for PC) (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Possible Solution (Score:2)
Back in those days, you actually COULD have 3 people play a multiplayer game on a single keyboard. Lots of body heat, but lots of fun too.
"Ultimate History of Video Games" (Score:2, Interesting)
Play the game here.. (Score:2, Redundant)
It doesn't seem to work on my browser. Good luck!
Re:Pah (Score:1)
I think you are at the wrong website [hyperreal.org]
Re:The first? (Score:1)
Re:The first? (Score:2, Informative)
- pydron
Re:The first? (Score:2, Informative)
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
karmath (Score:2)
Way later, dude (Score:3, Informative)