In 1962, a group of MIT students created an exciting new computer game called Spacewar!. For years, students at university mainframes across the world played and improved on the original hit. Unfortunately for the general public, unless they happened to be engineering students, or had access to large and expensive mainframe computers, they would never be able to see or play this masterpiece. A few enterprising people decided to try to bring the exiting gameplay of Spacewar! to the public (and make a few bucks in the process).

The Galaxy Game- Computer Recreations, Inc.

In 1971, The Digital Equipment Corp. released the latest in their popular line of PDP computers, the PDP-11. This "microcomputer" had all the power of the earlier mainframe computers, but condensed into a smaller package. Former Stanford student Bill Pitts decided to take one of these new microcomputers, place it in a large box, and create a coin-operated version of Spacewar!.

Pitts teamed up with a friend named Hugh Tuck to form Computer Recreations, Inc. in order to build these Spacewar! arcade cabinets. Pitts worked on programming the first machine while Tuck created the cabinet itself. After three months of development, the first Spacewar! arcade machine was ready to be released.

Pitts and Tuck decided to release their creation at Stanford, Pitts' alma mater. The Spacewar arcade machine, now called the Galaxy Game, debuted in September at the Tresidder Student Union. It cost 10 cents to play the game, and 25 cents for three plays. The system was upgraded in 1972, adding additional cabinets.

Unfortunately, the Galaxy Game was not profitable, despite it's popularity. The system had cost at least $20,000 to set up, and it would take too long to make that money back 10 cents at a time. No other Galaxy Game cabinets were made, and the one at Stanford was eventually disconnected in 1979. 25 years later, the original Galaxy Game hardware was restored, and is now permanently displayed at the Computer History Museum is California.

The Galaxy Game fell victim to the lack the of business acumen of it's creators at Computer Recreations. However, another much more business savvy person will soon take his own shot at a Spacewar! arcade machine.

Computer Space- Nutting Associates

When Spacewar! began to spread to college campus mainframes around the country, one student was especially drawn to it. That student, Nolan Bushnell, would take his love of games with him to the Ampex Corporation, where he was a research engineer. Bored working on uninteresting engineering jobs at Ampex, Bushnell started to create his own coin-op version of Spacewar! as a side project.

Working out of his daughter's bedroom, Bushnell designed a version of Spacewar! that would fit in an arcade cabinet. The high cost of computer parts led him to scrap the idea of using a microprocessor to control the machine, instead opting to use a group of discrete transistors and diodes (the same strategy that Ralph Baer used to create the Odyssey). Instead of using an expensive computer monitor, Bushnell designed the game to run on a cheap black and white TV. Bushnell and fellow Ampex engineer Ted Dabney fine tuned the new machine and then formed a company called Syzygy in order to sell the game.

Syzygy approached Nutting Associates, a company that made mechanical coin-op amusement games. Nutting loved the new game and wanted to buy the rights to it. However, Bushnell did not want to completely give up the rights to his creation. Instead, Bushnell and Nutting came up with a deal where Bushnell would keep the rights to his game, now called Computer Space, and create a second game for Nutting that they would get to keep. Bushnell also joined Nutting as chief engineer, working on a variety of projects for the company.

Computer Space retained most of Spacewar's gameplay, including the basic control scheme. The gravity well in the middle of the playfield was eliminated and the one on one showdown of the original was changed to one player ship vs two computer saucers. The player would have 90 seconds to kill as many computer ships as they could, getting an additional 90 seconds of playtime if they could score more than the computer.

Nutting manufactured 1500 Computer Space arcade cabinets, and Bushnell traveled to various trade shows to scare up business for his new game. Bushnell had even designed a futuristic fiberglass cabinet in order to attract customers. (The cabinet was so eye catching that a Computer Space machine would be used as a prop in the movie Soylent Green.) Computer Space was now officially the first mass produced, commercially sold video game ever.

Unfortunately, most bars and supermarkets passed on the game, believing that it was too difficult for people to understand. The few people who did get to play the game agreed, and Computer Space quickly became a commercial failure. Of the 1500 machines originally manufactured, only around 1000 sold. Bushnell developed a two-player version of Computer Space for Nutting, fulfilling the terms of his original agreement, and then left the company. Nutting Associates would go out of business soon after.

The failure of Computer Space did have a happy ending. Bushnell learned from this experience that consumers wanted simple but addictive gameplay. This would eventually lead to the development of PONG, and the rest is history.