Space Wars

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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

Developer(s)	Cinematronics
Publisher(s)	Cinematronics
Designer(s)	Larry Rosenthal
Release date(s)	1977
Genre(s)	Multi-directional shooter
Mode(s)	2 players, player vs. player
Platform(s)
Input	push buttons (5)
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade display	Horizontal, Vector, black and white

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

[edit] 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. Three other fascinating features were unique to this game. First, the game could not be played in "one player" mode; you had to have a human opponent. Second, your ship could take a hit without dying but would suffer damage first; a cloud of loose ship fragments would briefly surround your ship after which your ship would be visibly damaged on screen and would turn and accelerate more slowly. Third and most memorable was that the duration of play for any contest was solely governed by the amount of money deposited; each quarter bought a minute and a half of play. A dollar bought six minutes and for a ten dollar roll of quarters you and your opponent could play non-stop for an hour.

[edit] 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.