Spacewar! on the PDP-1

In 1961, three students of the MIT (Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen) experienced vector graphics on a DEC PDP-1 computer. The game started with two spaceships shooting each other. The students discovered that the debugger program generated random pixels on the screen, which they liked because they looked like stars. Because such designs had to be done in an elegant way at that time, they simulated the real constellation with moving stars and variable luminance. Talk about realism ! Once done, they found the game still easy and added the gravity star, often called sun, which attracted the spaceships. Although this game looked like a video game, it did not use a video display, so could not qualify as such. Yet, it was an extraordinary precursor of what would invade homes and bars in the 1970s. Fortunately the original Spacewar can be played on any computer with Java enabled. Simply go to this link. After reading the "readme" page you can play the game as in 1961.

Fonte: Pong Story

Wikipédia: SpaceWar