Wayback Wednesday: “Spacewar!” – the first space shooter, circa 1961

Here’s a video (and a linked story) for a space shooter created in 1961 on a PDP-1.

Don’t get your hopes up to play Spacewar! on it’s original home, as only 3 PDP-1′s are known to exist at this time.  However, if you make it down to the Computer History Museum, you can watch someone else play it ;)

It would have been pretty cool to work as a programmer in those days, although the paper tape/punchcards would have sucked…ah, never mind that I said that. I remember my dad regaling me with stories of how just one misplaced card could ruin a whole program if you weren’t careful.

Story comes via: [The Verge] (read it, the story is pretty cool)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/Kalanac John Chapman

    It would have been nice to see them loading up the program on the PDP-1