Spacewar – First Shooting Game

The first shooting game was created by three students from MIT on a DEC PDP-1 mini-computer in 1961.  Those students included Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen.  The game was called "Spacewar."  This early game was not a video game, because it did not use a video display, the PDP-1 computer used a vector display system.

Spacewar consisted of two spaceships which shot at each other.  To bring some sense of reality to the game, the students made a special background which simulated a real constellation.  The students also wanted to add some complexity to Spacewar, so they added a new element to the game, the gravity star; which attracts the spaceship(s.)  This star is usually called sun.

Later, Stephen Russell admitted that the best thing about Spacewar was that the game has set an example for numerous arcade game developers of future, this early game inspired them in the creation of their own games.

The interesting thing is that the game of Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen was used as a test on new PDP-1 systems, because there was not any other program which allowed DEC technicians to do a complete check of all aspects of the system except Spacewar.

Experiments of Arcade Game Developers

At the end of 70-ies – 80-ies arcade game developers were experimenting with new hardware. For example, they were creating video arcade games with non-video technology such as vector displays. Vector displays, unlike the raster displays, produced crisp lines.

Some of these arcade games gained a big popularity. Among them are created by Atari in 1980 Battlezone and Tempest and 1983’s Star Wars, also from Atari.

But vector technology fell out of favor with arcade game companies. This happened because the vector displays are very expensive in repairing.

In order to provide games with movie-quality animation, arcade game developers were also experimented with laserdisc players. The very first video arcade game that used this technology is Dragon's Lair. It was released in 1983. The whole process of creation of this game took three years.

The release of Dragon's Lair was true sensation. But, in result, the popularity of the genre was dwindled. The reasons for this were the following:

• these arcade games were fairly linear;
• they depended less on reflexes than on memorizing sequences of moves.