Imagesource: https://www.masswerk.at/

Almost exactly 60 years ago in April it happened. Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others breathed the first life into Spacewar! on one of the most modern computers of the time - the PDP-1.

The gameplay is simple. Two players, two spaceships, one star having gravity. Each player has limited fuel to change the orbit and some torpedoes at her / his disposal. If your orbit gets too close to the star, or you get hit by a torpedo ... you're screwed.

The gameplay is as simple as it is addictive, and Spacewar! definitely had a lasting impact on subsequent computer game history.

As a tribute to the game, Norbert Landsteiner from mass:werk has now taken on the game, and released a browser port with a lot of attention to detail. Besides the 9 versions of Spacewar! there is also the probably first pixel art demo SnowFlake online.

If you are interested in the history of the game, you can find the answers in Benj Edward's howtogeek article.

In any case, a piece of history worth knowing and a game worth spending some hours.