Reintroducing the PDP-1
For decades, dedicated software developers have tirelessly worked to preserve video game hardware within the constraints of software emulation. We believe FPGA is the next step - the pinnacle of preserving video game hardware for the future.
With openFPGA, it's in your hands now.
Spacewar! leveraged the PDP-1's 1024 x 1024 CRT vector display to artfully make use of beautiful blue and green phosphors, trailing, bursting and decaying amidst modernist hexagons.
Spacewar!'s Impact on Video Games
Spacewar! set forth fundamental characteristics that would become the standard in video games. Pushing technology and hardware to the maximum limits. Physics, simulated, realistically and playfully. Interactively. Combat based game play with shooting as a core mechanic.
Spacewar! influenced video game history in countless ways, one in which was the group of MIT students that created it. These students developed perhaps the first philosophy to guide the creation of a video game:
They held that a computer game should satisfy the following three criteria:
- It should demonstrate as many of the computer's resources as possible, and tax those resources to the limit.
- Within a consistent framework, it should be interesting, which means every run should be different.
- It should involve the onlooker in a pleasurable and active way-in short, it should be a game.
Sometime later, a young Nolan Bushnell, at the University of Utah, who went on to found Atari, spent hours playing Spacewar! and through its inspiration, created Computer Space, the first commercial video game and arcade game.
PDP-1
Engineered for User Interaction
DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) released the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1) in 1959. The PDP-1 was the first commercial computer that was engineered with a focus on interaction with the user.
When you see Orion coming around for the second time, you know you've been playing too long
— Peter Samson on the realistic star display he wrote for Spacewar!
Play Spacewar! on Analogue Pocket now, with a PDP-1 Core developed with openFPGA.
Experience the world's first ever video game.
We had a dream of interactive computing. Normal computing was considered big, expensive, awesome, beyond ordinary people. Interactive computing was exciting and fun, and people could interact directly with the computer.
— Ken Olsen, co-founder of DEC
* References:
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/computer-games/16/189/2213
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/play-the-pentagon-funded-video-game-that-predates-pong-fbc4696e32dc
https://libraries.mit.edu/150books/2011/05/07/1981/
https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space
† Analogue's Development program was created to further video game hardware preservation with FPGA technology. Analogue Developers have access to Analogue Pocket I/O's so Developers can utilize cartridge adapters or interface with other pieces of original or bespoke hardware to support legacy media. Analogue does not support or endorse the unauthorized use or distribution of material protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights. The Analogue Developer program features a 3rd party created PDP-1 core with the first video game ever created, Spacewar!. PDP-1 and Spacewar! are both in the public domain.