The chronogaming journey begins here in 1971 with what is arguably the first coin-operated arcade video game, Galaxy Game.
Galaxy Game is essentially an coin-operated adaptation of Steve Russell's 1962 game, Spacewar!, a space combat game that had become massively popular and well-known in university circles. The idea to adapt Spacewar! into a coin-operated game came from Hugh Tuck, who suggested the idea to his friend Bill Pitts, both of whom played Spacewar! together frequently at Stanford University.
Tuck's idea made a lot of sense, considering the growing popularity of Spacewar! throughout the 60s. A commercial, coin-op version would've probably made good money. The problem was that the computers of the late 60s that ran Spacewar! were far too expensive, making the production of a coin-op version completely unviable.
However, once 1970 rolled around, and DEC had released the next minicomputer in their PDP lineup, the PDP-11, things suddenly weren't quite as unviable as they were before. Granted, the PDP-11 still cost ~US$14,000, but that was still an awful lot cheaper than anything else around at the time. Seeing this, Pitts and Tuck decided that now it was worth building a prototype to test their idea, and so Galaxy Game was born.
The first prototype. A PDP-11 was able to run two simultaneously. Source: Gaming-History
Galaxy Game was installed in Stanford University's Tresidder building in 1971. There appears to be some confusion online regarding when exactly it was installed. Wikipedia's article states it was November 1971, however there are numerous other sources that say September instead. The MobyGames page sums this confusion up pretty well, having the release date as November, but just down the page in the game description it says September. I haven't dived too deep into this, and I don't think it's all that important, either, but I generally prefer earlier dates if there's enough sources to support it.
The second prototype at the Computer History Museum. Source: Wikipedia
Galaxy Game became quite the hit at Stanford, with people waiting for up to an hour at times just to play a single round. A second version (see image above) was produced in 1972 that allowed 4 cabinets to play simultaneously (though it appears this was never implemented due to space limitations). This version remained until 1979, when it was disassembled due to the processor becoming faulty. It was restored in 1997, and since 2000 has resided at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Now let's get into the game itself. I'm playing it through MAME for this, though it is also available to play online.
After selecting how many games you want to play, the options menu appears. These options can be changed using the DIP switches. The choices are:
Positive or Negative Gravity
Sun or No Sun
Slow or Fast Speed
One or Two Player
On the surface it seems like there's quite a decent array of choices to customise your gameplay experience. In practice, however, it doesn't quite work out like that.
Naturally, I select the "one player" mode, assuming that there will be some form of computer opponent for me to face. Why else have a one player mode? But no, there is in fact no AI opponent. I control the ship starting in the bottom left, and the other ship perpetually travels a steady course south until I blow it up. It doesn't even shoot. Once I fly over to it and destroy it, that's it. Game over. I'm really not sure why the game even has this option, it's completely pointless.
Galaxy Game gives you a few game settings to choose from.
As for the other options... well, let's discuss the gravity mechanic. The sun in the middle of the screen is supposed to have, like Spacewar!, gravity that pulls the ships toward it. Negative gravity would make it push the ships away. Note that I say supposed to. Gravity appears to not work at all. I've tried all manner of combinations and there simply isn't any gravity no matter what I try. Now, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt here and assume that this is an emulation issue, although I did try the archive.org online version as well, and there was no gravity there, either. Does it make much of a difference? Well, not really, since there's barely any game for me to play to begin with, but it is still an issue that one of the game's core mechanics is straight up non-functional.
It certainly looks like Spacewar! Fuel meters are in the bottom corners.
As for speed control, slow is fine if you enjoy watching snail races, otherwise I'd stick with the fast speed, it's far more exciting. I should also mention that there is fuel to manage and hyperspace like in Spacewar!, but they're a non-factor when playing alone.
You can also, much to my amusement, blow yourself up, since the missiles wrap around the screen and travel quite the distance before disappearing.
There's not a whole lot left to discuss at this juncture, so on to the scores.
Play Time: Approx. 35 minutes (cumulative over several sessions)
Difficulty: 0/10
For Game Design, I can only give a 1, considering that a non-functional one player mode was included. Remember, I judge based on single-player experience, and this completely fails at providing a meaningful one.
Controls get a 7. The control layout transfers well onto keyboard for MAME. The Newtonian physics are sluggish, however, and even more so if running on the slow speed option (I don't know why anyone would ever willingly play on slow speed.)
Sound & Audio: There is no sound, so N/A.
Visual: The game doesn't look horrible; the starfield gives a sense of the vastness of space, and the particle effects after a ship is destroyed are particularly memorable. There is a lot of flickering going on, however, and it's quite distracting. The ships aren't drawn very well, either, with the bottom left one, being more wire frame-like in appearance, having lines disappear and merge constantly, yet another visual distraction. 4.
Story: N/A.
Functionality: Giving it a 1 because the game itself is still playable, even if one of the core mechanics doesn't work, invalidating several of the game options.
Accessibility: It's not a difficult game to access or understand how to play, but I did initially have some trouble figuring out how to change settings and to actually get a game started. 3.
'Fun' Factor: There's not really any point, so not really any fun to be had, therefore it gets a 0.
Overall that gives Galaxy Gamea score of 16/70, or 22.8%, putting it in the F-tier. It's rather unfortunate that I give such a historically important game such a low score, but I can only judge what I can play. Out of historical interest, I'd say it's still worth a try, just bring a friend so that it can be appreciated properly.
No comments:
Post a Comment