COMPUTER SPACE (1970),
X1025.90, GIFT OF ALAN RIFKIN
CHRIS GARCIA
While Pong (1972) is often called the "First Arcade Video Game," the title
rightfully belongs to Computer Space,
developed a year earlier in 1971 by Nolan Bushnell for Nutting Associates
of Mountain View, California. The game
closely resembled Steven "Slug" Russell's SpaceWar!, developed at MIT in
the early 1960s for play on the DEC
PDP-1. Computer Space featured two ships gliding through star-filled space
trying to shoot down opponents with
missiles. The black and white monitor and console speakers seem quite
primitive by today's game standards,
but in the 1970s, these were far more sophisticated than anything else that
was being played in pinball-
dominated arcades.
Perhaps the best reason Pong gets all the attention is the fact that not
many people played Computer Space
with its complex controls. Pong, possibly the easiest of the early video
games, sold more than 100,000 units,
while Computer Space sold less than 3,000 units. Realizing that the game
itself may have been too complex for
most users of the day, Nutting Associates then tried unsuccessfully to
market the game in a "Beautiful Space-Age
Cabinet" with attendant scantily-dressed model.
After the failure of Computer Space, Bushnell formed Atari (originally
called Syzygy), and released the wildly
popular Pong game in 1972. Atari went on to become the dominant video game
company through the early
1980s. After selling Atari to Warner Brothers, Bushnell later founded Pizza
Time Theatres and Sendai Electronic
Games. ::
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Chris Garcia is Historical Collections Coordinator at The Computer Museum
History Center
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