This article is about an arcade game. To read about the Atari 2600 game, see Space War. To read about the PDP-1 game, see Spacewar!. To read about war in space, see interstellar war.

Space Wars was the first vector graphics arcade game. It is based on Spacewar!, a PDP-1 program that might arguably be the earliest video game.

Description

Space Wars was the brainchild of Larry Rosenthal, an MIT graduate who was fascinated with the original Spacewar! and developed his own custom hardware and software so that he could play the game. Rosenthal shopped the game to various manufacturers, demanding an unheard-of 50% split of the profits. Only Cinematronics was willing to take him up on the offer.

One player controlled a wedge-shaped starship (reminiscent of the Star Destroyer from Star Wars or, more likely, a Tholian vessel), and the other controlled a ship shaped like the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek. One button rotated the ship left, another rotated the ship right, one engaged thrust, one fired a shell, and one entered hyperspace (which causes the ship to disappear and reappear elsewhere on the playfield at random).

The game offered a number of gameplay options, including the presence or absence of a star in the middle of the playfield (that exerted a positive or negative gravitational pull or push), whether the edges of the playfield "wrapped around" to their opposite sides, and whether shells bounced.

Legacy

Space Wars formed the basis of the platform which would take Cinematronics in to the early '80s. Most of their subsequent black and white vector games (such as Star Castle and Tail Gunner) were based on this basic custom design.

External links

• Article at The Dot Eaters, detailing a history of Cinematronics and the development of Space Wars

Cinematronics games | Arcade games | Vector arcade games | 1977 arcade games | Shoot 'em ups