#020: Space Race - Asteroid Astro Race

Release Date: July 16, 1973 (July-August 1974 in Japan)

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Racing

Developer(s): Atari

Publisher(s): Atari (licensed to Midway; Namco published in Japan)

Well, it's finally time to return to the arcade, and for the first time in my 1973 coverage. This is mostly due to the lack of arcade games on list up to this point with concrete dates. As a rule, any game that has no specific date is pushed to the end of the list for that year.

The state of the arcade in 1973 doesn't make for an awfully interesting picture; 90% of the games are either direct Pong clones, or variations of Pong. Atari, for instance, made Pong Doubles and Quadrapong as sequels. Pong was even cloned for the nascent Japanese market, with the first two video-game-making Japanese companies, SEGA and Taito, both producing several clones. Sorry to burst the bubble of anyone who thought Nintendo was first. Gotta wait till 1977 for them to get in on the Pong-cloning action.

The 10% of games that weren't shamless Pong cash-grabs came from - surprise, surprise - Atari. They produced two wholly unique games in 1973: Gotcha, the source of video gaming's first public controversy, and the earlier of the two - and today's topic, Space Race. Space Race also marks a first, but of a different kind to Gotcha. It's the first racing arcade game. Some make the claim that it's the first ever racing game, but the 101 BASIC Computer Games book features a text-based racing game, Can-Am, that predates Space Race by a year, which is likely the first. 

Can't escape from Pong's shadow.

Space Race is only Atari's second game, officially. Third, if you want to count Computer Space as an Atari product. Most online sources cite Al Alcorn as the sole designer of Space Race, but this is untrue. It appears that the development was handled by both Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn at the least, with possible involvement from Ted Dabney. According to Bushnell, work on Space Race began in 1971 before even Computer Space. The working title for the game at that time was Asteroid. Bushnell came up with the initial design, which was later completed by Alcorn after Bushnell had to drop the project in order to deal with the business management side of Atari. Dabney disputed this story, claiming to have finalised the design himself. Sadly, Dabney would leave Atari prior to Space Race's release due to his falling out with Bushnell, effectively ending his time in the video game industry.

After Bushnell incorporated Atari, he was able to score a contract with Bally Manufacturing for an arcade game. According to The Ultimate History of Video Games, Bushnell pitched the idea of a racing game set in outer space. He likely knew he had the Asteroid design in his back pocket. However, once Alcorn finished the design of Pong, Bushnell tried to offer that instead. Bally weren't interested, and would get the racing game they were initially offered in the form of Space Race in 1973. The game would be manufactured by Midway Manufacturing, whom Bally had owned since 1969, and given its original name: Asteroid.

What goes on next I think sums up the Wild West attitude of the burgeoning arcade scene in the 1970s. Atari, for some undisclosed reason, decided to make Space Race for themselves. As you can imagine, Midway were not overly pleased about this, accusing Atari of breaching contract. They were able to reach a compromise of dropping the 3% royalty payment to Atari stated in the contract. 

While there's a concrete date for Space Race's release, July 16, 1973, dating Asteroid is much harder, as there's very little information about when it was officially released. The only evidence I found suggested that the earliest release date possible may be September '73, which was from someone claiming to have an Asteroid service manual dated to September '73. I've also seen December '73, and even January '74 suggested as release dates for Asteroid, but there's nothing concrete. At the very least, everything suggests that Asteroid was out after Space Race.

Atari also had a go at releasing the game in Japan, which was initially to be handled by the ill-fated Atari Japan division. Due to financial issues and lack of interest, Atari Japan never really got going, and was sold to the Nakamura Manufacturing Company - otherwise known as Namco, marking their entrance into the video game industry. We now had a big three of Japanese arcade games: SEGA, Taito, and Namco. Namco would handle the Japanese release of Space Race, as well as become Atari's partner company, handling all of their arcade releases in Japan from then onwards.

But it doesn't end there! The Japanese release of Space Race generated a clone cabinet from one of the other big three - Taito - called Astro Race. Taito had already got their start in the video game industry cloning Pong, which was exclusively done by now-legendary game designer Tomohiro Nishikado - the man who created Space Invaders. SEGA had no interest in Space Race, being content producing Pong clones and variants. 

I love how imaginative 70s video game art is.

The Japanese side of Space Race is also rather complicated in terms of dating. Most of the common sites I see online have both Namco's licensed release and Taito's Astro Race listed as 1973 releases, the most common date for Astro Race being November '73. However, MobyGames and Wikipedia suggest otherwise for Namco's Space Race, having its release date as August 1974 and July '74 respectively. Wikipedia cites a Japanese book listing all arcade releases in Japan from 1971 - 2005. Bandai-Namco's official history supports the idea of a 1974 release, stating that Namco acquired Atari Japan in 1974, meaning that a 1973 release is highly implausible, if not impossible. I went looking for Astro Race in that Japanese book (finally, a use for my Japanese language skills!) and found Astro Race listed as a November '73 release. The only way I can see that making sense is if Taito imported a US Space Race shortly after its release, and made their clone that way. Unfortunately, I have no way of proving this, and there's no evidence I can find to contradict the November '73 release of Astro Race. All I can provide for now is a plausible explanation for the November '73 date.

Overall, Space Race in all its iterations didn't perform terribly well. According to Ralph Baer's hand-written sales spreadsheets, Asteroid sold about 2,000 units, and Space Race 1,500. By contrast, Pong sold 8,000 units in 1973 alone. The only information on the Japanese side of sales figures was with Astro Race, which apparently sold at least 1,000 units, according to the vgsales Fandom. It's not a wholly reliable figure, as their reference for it doesn't actually mention Astro Race at all - it's just an interview with Nishikado. Namco's Japanese release of Space Race has no sales figures I could find.

Carved out of a pillar of alien emerald.

The cabinet designs across all variants of Space Race are quite varied, and Atari's in particular has a very interesting background to it. Initially, they attempted to manufacture a cabinet in fibreglass, like Computer Space, although with a far more complex design. KLOV has a picture of that design, and it's honestly a very cool design - it looks like it was carved out of an alien rock formation, in contrast to the smooth, space-age terminal of Computer Space. Bushnell claims that they made about 50 of these before deciding that the process of manufacturing this design was too slow and costly. The final design is, frankly, quite awful. It's this dreadfully plain, black cabinet with a white panel where the joysticks are mounted. The only additional graphic is a "Space Race" sticker, written in bold, friendly letters, plastered on the top of the monitor.

Brought back down to Earth...

By comparison, Midway's Asteroid cabinet (as seen in an earlier picture) is like the difference between black & white and colour TV. It's predominately blue, with all different sorts of graphics on the front and side. Rockets on the side, stars and asteroids on the front. I think it looks great. The Japanese cabinets are mixed - there's actually two different designs on Taito's Astro Race fliers. One is the "standard" model - reminiscent of Asteroid, minus the colour, and the other is the "deluxe" model - a strangely-shaped terminal that looks like it could've been on the USS Enterprise. Again, I couldn't find any information on Namco's licensed release.

Taito's other cabinet design.

All of that, and I haven't even gotten into the gameplay yet!

Immediately, there's a problem with trying to play an arcade game as old as Space Race. Like Pong and Computer Space before it, Space Race was designed using discrete components, also known as transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL.) This was the time before microprocessors, meaning that Space Race doesn't technically have a ROM. Typically, for the overwhelming majority of games from this pre-microprocessor era, you have to have access to the cabinet or PCB, otherwise you ain't playing it.

However, this is not the case for Space Race. There exists what is known as the "Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator," or DICE for short. This was a program that was intended to emulate TTL games like Space Race, and it is a game that DICE supports. Sadly, the project has been dead since about 2016, leaving many, many games stuck in limbo. As it stands, it maybe supports about 15-20 games, mostly by Atari or their subsidiary, Kee Games.

DICE is also quite unstable in its current form, technically still a beta program. I've used it for several years, and it has a terrible habit of crashing. On my new laptop, running Windows 11, it crashes on the GUI, not even allowing me to select a game to play. The good news is that there's a couple of workarounds for this, as the issue appears to be with the frontend of the program, and not the games themselves. All I needed to do was run DICE through the command line interface, which is a simple process of:

1. Right click on the folder DICE is located in.
2. Click "Open in Terminal."
3. Type "dice <gamename>"

And the game will run without issue. Alternatively, running DICE in Windows 8 compatibility mode also works. For certain games, like Breakout, the latter solution is preferrable, as the control scheme will need to be adjusted in order to have the best experience. I hate playing paddle games with arrow keys or a d-pad.

The objective of Space Race is fairly simple: two players pilot competing rocket ships with the aim of navigating through the scrolling asteroid field as many times as possible within the time limit. The timer, represented by the white line dividing the screen in half, lasts for a bit over 2 minutes. There's only two directions you can move the rocket ship in: up or down. Anytime you hit an asteroid, the ship's position is reset to its starting point at the bottom of the screen.

While technically a two-player game, Space Race is playable solo without losing out on any of the gameplay. It just becomes a time trial instead of a competitive race, which I don't mind at all.

Personally, I've already had a few years' experience with Space Race. My interest in video game history boomed in 2021 after I purchased Atari Vault on Steam. From there, I kept wanting to look further and further back, and DICE was one of the first places I went to investigate vintage arcade games. I'd still regard Space Race as one of the better games playable through DICE.

The mysterious white line in the middle of the screen is the timer.

At first, you might be thinking "Hmm, this reminds me of Frogger." Well, you're not the only one. Most other sites and reviews I've seen discuss Space Race have said the same thing, that Space Race is like a simpler version of Konami's Frogger, or Activision's Freeway on the Atari 2600. The concept is functionally the same in all these games.

I've always liked the sound design of Space Race in a strange, endearing sort of way. DICE doesn't emulate sound in most games, but Space Race is one of the few that DICE does have sound for. The primitive, 70s space-age analog beeps and boops rise and lower in pitch as the ships move up and down the screen, and there's a separate sound channel for each ship. In a base sort of way, the rising pitch as you get closer and closer to completing a lap conveys a sense of tension and excitement.

Oooh, that's not gonna end well...

At first, one might think that the game's "asteroid field" is generated randomly. However, once you've played Space Race enough times like I have, you'll probably begin to notice patterns in the asteroid field. In fact, it's actually a static field - not random at all. There are times where it's possible to get stuck in a kind of loop, where you'll be forced to maneuver through the same pattern of asteroids over and over, which is a bit annoying, as that pattern is usually a slow one. Conversely, it can be seen as a positive design choice, as it allows for learning the playfield, learning the patterns of what asteroids are going to be where and when. I've used this to great effect, allowing me to take informed risks to get ahead. Space Race is most rewarding when you play aggressively.

I had to play around with OBS for a little while to get it to record properly. The visuals were freezing in my recording attempts, but the sound was still playing. During this time, I managed a best score of 17 laps. I can't remember what my best score was the last time I played, but I think it was around 16. I think 18 or maybe 19 is probably the highest possible score, both would require perfect play, not getting hit once, and getting good patterns. Once I got OBS to work, I was still unable to get to 18, coming agonisingly short of the mark in one run.

Time to take a pit stop and do the scores.

Time Played: 30 minutes (for this article)

Difficulty: 3/10 (Easy)

I've never found Space Race to be particularly challenging. It's very simple, and controls well enough to make dodging asteroids easy. There's viable risk-taking options that up the challenge a little.

Gameplay: 11

I honestly think Space Race is a pretty well-designed, simple arcade game. One can go either way on the static asteroid field - it could be viewed a limiting variety and challenge. I see it as a boon, as it provides opportunity to learn the playfield and identify what cycles allow for fast movement, and the ones that force slow movement. That then provides strategic options, in taking risk to get ahead of a bad cycle, or even slowing down slightly to get into a good, fast cycle. Personally, I think the static playfield was an intentional choice, and it seems to me like a decent amount of testing went into the placement of each asteroid.

Controls: 6

Space Race has a very simple control scheme, but one that works very well. The pace at which the rocket ships travel feels just about right; it's not too fast to make the game too easy, and not too slow to make it feel sluggish to control. There's only so much one can do with a control scheme such as this, but what's been done works well.

Sound: 6

I get to talk about sound! As mentioned earlier, I actually quite like the sound design of Space Race. Yes, it's silly beeps and boops, but its the way they're implemented that I like. Having a sound channel for each ship is neat, but the fact that the game has dynamic sound is kind of innovative for its time. Having the pitch of the sounds shift up and down, according to where the ships are on the playing field, and especially having it rise the closer you get to completing a lap I think adds to the overall tension and excitement of the game.

Visual: 2

It's not all positive for Space Race. This game is ugly, and so is its (Atari) cabinet. I've never liked the way the ships were drawn. They look... inappropriate. Having the timer be a white line directly in the centre of the screen, while making sense to divide it into two so that each player has a half, is distracting and breaks what little immersion the game has to offer. It's really just overall not nice to look at. 

Functionality: 5

I've never run across any glitches (aside from OBS not liking DICE), so full marks here.

Accessibility: 4

The only thing I'll knock points off for here is that you're likely not to see a cabinet of this out in the wild, meaning that emulation is the only way to play it for now. What it does get points for is its incredible simplicity, meaning that it's a very easy game to understand and play for almost anyone.

Fun Factor: 10

It's fun. I enjoy it. Space Race is always a good time to come back to, even if I won't necessarily seek it out in favour of more complex experiences. It's simple and short enough that I can come back, play it for 10-15 minutes, try for a high score, and then leave it.

Space Race ends its course with a score of 44 which, after calculations, earns it a podium finish as 3rd overall in the C-tier, after a photo finish. I'm actually a little surprised - it did better than I expected. That's the second C-tier game of 1973.

I'm only likely to cover one more arcade game for 1973, which will be a Gaiden article covering Gotcha. That game's interesting enough to warrant it, unlike all the Pong clones. For the rest of 1973, it's back to text-based games, but we've got some interesting ones coming up very soon.

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#008: Pong

Release Date: 29 November, 1972

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Sports

Developer(s): Atari (Al Alcorn)

Publisher(s): Atari

What can be said that hasn't already been said about Pong? Commonly misidentified as the first video game - it's not even the first arcade video game ever made - due to its overwhelming status as the game that truly launched the arcade industry, if not the entire video game industry (I know Ralph Baer had a word or two to say about that...) Pong is simply legendary, and a defining part of the legacy of a company that would dominate the much of the arcade and home console space all the way up till the infamous video game crash of 1983.

Much of the story of Atari's founding I've already covered in my Computer Space article. The short version is, Atari was originally founded as Syzygy Engineering by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, after Bushnell got the idea to make a commercially sellable version of Spacewar!, which would eventually turn out as Computer Space, developed in partnership with amusement manufacturer Nutting Associates.

Computer Space didn't do terribly well with the public, and was considered too complicated for drunk bar patrons and the like to understand - a hilarious statement to make nowadays considering Computer Space only had 4 buttons. Regardless, Bushnell was forced back to the drawing board. He needed a simpler game.

The idea he needed came in May of 1972, although maybe not quite as he thought it might. Bushnell was attending a demonstration of an innovative new device that could play games through a TV set - the Magnavox Odyssey. He observed, and played the Table Tennis game. He was not impressed by what he played. Bushnell is quoted by Ralph Baer (creator of the Odyssey) as saying,

"..it had no scoring... [or] sound effects... the motion was erratic and difficult to control. I felt that it was not a satisfactory game playing device."

Regardless of what Bushnell thought, it's clear that what he saw at that demo stuck with him. Atari had recently hired a young, talented engineer in Al Alcorn. While Bushnell had a contract to create a driving game for arcade manufacturer Bally, he thought that would be too much for the greenhorn engineer who'd never seen a video game in his life. Instead, Bushnell wisely wanted him to get his feet wet with game design, and so set him a test project - replicate the Odyssey's Table Tennis with arcade hardware.

Bushnell had a few different ideas in mind for this test project. Initially he wanted the two paddles to be more akin to two people holding racquets with a button press making them swing the racquet (more akin to later tennis games.) He also wanted sound - he wanted to hear something akin to the cheers and roars of a tennis crowd. Ted Dabney asked for boos and hisses when you missed the ball. What Alcorn came up with - in a week-and-a-half - was much simpler than that. He had two paddles, controlled with rotating dials, a score counter, and little beeps and boops for when the ball hit the paddle and for when you missed. Crucially, the game also had a mechanic that sped up the ball every so often. The circuit board was connected to a black & white TV set, with Dabney constructing a small wooden cabinet around it.

Bushnell was happy with this, and Atari employees found it quite fun to play. However, it was still a test project, and Bushnell stated that it wasn't seen as a viable product. Atari had contracts for more complex games (like that driving game.) Still, it had piqued Bushnell's interest, and so he decided to give it a public test run anyway. This first test was done at Andy Capp's Tavern, an establishment Bushnell had already built a solid friendship with - Computer Space was first tested here. The Pong box was placed on a barrel, with a rudimentary coin box glued to the side.

The first Pong prototype.

There's this legendary story about this first Pong cabinet that's akin to a prophetic utterance for the future of the video game industry. The story goes that, after two weeks, Atari gets called up by Andy Capp's owner saying that the game is broken. It was stuck on attract mode, and a game couldn't be started. The tavern owner was getting rather frustrated, by all accounts. What happened, in actual fact, was that the game wasn't broken - it was, rather, so popular that the coin box mounted to the side of the game was full to overflowing with quarters!

Another story from Pong's can be summed up in the meme "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" There was an issue in the way Al Alcorn designed the game, resulting in the paddles not being able to reach the very top of the screen. This meant that, if you were skilled enough, you could get the ball into this gap and always score a point, preventing an endless rally between equally skilled players. While testing the game, it was decided that this little error actually enhanced the gameplay, and so the choice was made to keep it in the game. Al Alcorn recalled in one interview that he learned from this that, "if you can't fix it, call it a feature." I'm sure that's happened a countless number of times to many a game developer.

From here it's actually a bit difficult to piece together a timeline of what happened. Unlike Ralph Bear, who meticulously documented everything, Bushnell did not. He was a more spontaneous, haphazard individual (which would have consequences later in dealing with copycats.) There's plenty of information about the time between the Andy Capp test in August 1972 and Pong's official debut on November 29, 1972. It's just that there are no dates attached to anything, so putting the information in order is a tough task.

In one interview, Bushnell recalls that the incident at Andy Capp's convinced him to invest into Pong. He marketed the game to big name arcade companies Midway and Bally, who where interested initially. Bushnell tricked them into pulling out by telling the respective companies that the other one was interested in making a licensing deal. Bushnell had decided Atari could make more profit out of Pong if they manufactured the game themselves. Atari at first could afford to produce eleven cabinets of Pong. Bushnell searched for financial backing, but no banks were willing to invest, as they viewed Pong in the same way they viewed pinball - a game associated with the Mafia. Eventually, they found Wells Fargo willing to give them $50k. This money, from what I gather, was used to expand Atari's business offices, and to purchase an abandoned roller skating rink to set up as an assembly plant. On November 29, 1972, Pong was officially unveiled. Early on, production of cabinets was slow and of substandard quality, as they had hired unskilled workers who often stole parts and were involved in heavy drug use.

Meanwhile, Atari had an established contract for pinball machine maintenance in the Sunnyvale area. There was already an established "Atari pinball route," and Bushnell utilised that route to advertise Pong to their existing clientele. Orders began coming in. Ten units here, ten units there. The snowball had begun. By the end of 1973, they had 2,500 units of Pong on order. 1974, it was 8,000. These kinds of numbers were unheard of at the time, and Pong was raking in thousands upon thousands of quarters. Atari even began exporting Pong internationally, most notably to Japan, where the imports would be first handled by Atari Japan, and later by a little company called Nakamura Manufacturing Co., otherwise known as Namco. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot about them later on.

Now, one of the consequences of Bushnell's haphazard management style is that he didn't really get around to patenting anything. What this resulted in is only what I can describe as complete anarchy. Everyone took notice of Pong's success, and they wanted in on that sweet, sweet coin. So, what did they do? Well, they stole, of course! Every electronics and arcade manufacturer (both in the US and overseas) known to man copied, copied copies and copied copies of copies of Pong over the course of just a couple of years. These weren't just loosely-based versions of Pong - no - they were exact replicas, only in different garb. Every company out there had their own reskin of Pong.

Without patents, Atari couldn't to a thing to stop all the chaos. Even just a cursory glance at Wikipedia's best-selling video games charts for 1973 and 1974 will show that Pong clones were not only rampant, but dominated sales. The insanity of the Pong clones was even more extreme in the first home console generation. For reference, the first generation of home consoles, according to Wikipedia, had 997 consoles. Almost a thousand consoles. And, I'd say maybe at least 75% of those were Pong clones. Such was the money-making machine Pong was perceived to be. In the end, Atari only manufactured roughly a third of all "Pong-like" games in circulation.

As for what Atari could do, it could capitalise on its new found success by expanding on the Pong brand. Sequels were created for Pong, such as Pong Doubles and Quadrapong. A home console version was made. Some of the more unusual ideas they came up with were Puppy Pong and Dr. Pong. These were just Pong, but with redesigned cabinets for business use. Puppy Pong had a more childlike design, and was meant to be placed in the waiting rooms of pediatric offices to help kids pass the time while waiting for appointments, and was free to play. Dr. Pong was the same concept, only for adult waiting rooms. It had a sleek, wood-grain finish design, and could also be purchased with a specially designed bookcase. It could also play a Volleyball game. Neither of these products gained much traction, and sales were very limited. There was also the humorous Barrel-Pong, which is exactly what you think it is. Predictably, this one was an Aussie creation.

Beer Pong taken to its logical conclusion.

Naturally, Pong has seen about as many re-releases as Sonic the Hedgehog over the years. The many Atari compilations, as well as flashback consoles, other anniversary-or-otherwise collections. There's even web browser and mobile ports. You could probably play Pong on a toaster these days, such is its ubiquity.

One more notable incident in Pong's legacy is, of course, the infamous lawsuit between Magnavox and Atari. I've already gone into the details of the lawsuit in the Odyssey console overview, so I'll keep it short. Magnavox took notice of Pong and the various clones on the market, and sued Atari for infringing on several patents. It appears Bushnell originally attempted to hide his attendance of the May 24 Odyssey demonstration at deposition hearings, however Magnavox lawyers had evidence proving his attendance. Bushnell, seeing that Atari could not afford the legal expenses of the case, settled with Magnavox. The terms were very light, with Atari paying a small, upfront license fee, becoming the sole licensee of Magnavox. Magnavox would then zealously go after other competitors, forcing them to pay royalties to Magnavox. 

While Magnavox were in the right to sue - Atari had directly recreated the Odyssey's Table Tennis - the settlement worked out very well for Atari in the long run. Atari were able to maintain their position as one of the most dominant video game developers / publishers until the 1983 crash. Magnavox, on the other hand, were relegated to only a minor player on the scene that cashed in on all those sweet, sweet royalties.

There's an interesting little footnote to add here; another layer to the already twisted and fractured dynamic between Pong and the Magnavox Odyssey. Fans of Pong saw the Odyssey as a means to play a Pong-like game at home. The success of Pong, therefore, had resulted in an upsurge of sales for the Odyssey. Funny how that worked out, considering that Atari would make their own home Pong version later on... but that's a story for another day.

I did actually opt to play Pong for this article, in spite of it being a multiplayer game. I might as well, seeing as it's very simple to play, and I've played both sides on my own before. As I just mentioned, there are several means available to play Pong, including trusty old emulation. I also had a proper play of it with my girlfriend through my Switch copy of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. As a side, that is how you honour a company's legacy.  

Sometimes you get stuck in a back-and-forth loop.

And I must say, it was nice to play a game that's not text-based for a change. Even if it's not exactly in an optimal form. Paddle controls don't translate particularly well to a keyboard or analog sticks. Nor does playing against yourself. Fortunately, the rounds with my girlfriend were more enjoyable, and she - not a gamer - also rather enjoyed herself. Nolan Bushnell noted in one interview that women tended to be quite good at Pong, and that it broke a few social barriers. He claims several marriages were started from a man asking a woman to play Pong with him.

No score for Pong, as it's a multiplayer game. Part of me is also thinking that there wouldn't be much point to critiquing Pong in my usual style anyway. It's just so foundational to the very core of video games that I wouldn't know how to score it. Maybe I'm just making excuses, I don't know. 

What I can say that this is an essential video game everyone must play at least once in their life. If I were to compile a "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" type of list, this would probably be the very first game on that list. If I wasn't doing it chronologically.

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Prehistory IX: Baer's "Brown Box" & Computer Quiz

This is the ninth in a series of mini-articles on the early history of video games. The game featured here will not receive a review score, and thus will not appear on the Tier List.

Here we go back to a more historical style of post. Neither of these games are playable, but both are historically very important for different reasons, hence why they get their own article.

The "Brown Box"

Image from the National Museum of American History.

Release Date: 1967; technically an unreleased prototype

Platform: Dedicated Console

Genre: Various

Developer(s): Ralph H. Baer

Publisher(s): Sanders Associates

[Ed. I've now done a more thorough overview of the Black Box as part of my Magnavox Odyssey console overview article, which you can read here.]

It might seem a bit odd to the casual observer to cover something that's a prototype; an experiment of sorts. But this little experiment, and its creator, had a massive impact on the formation of the commercialisation of video games.

The Brown Box was developed by Ralph H. Baer, an engineer and inventor born in Germany, migrating to the USA in 1938 prior to the outbreak of World War II due to his family's Jewish background. He ended up studying electronics, and after the conclusion of WWII (where he was drafted into the US Army in military intelligence), he worked as an engineer in various fields before landing at Sanders Associates, a defense contractor, in 1956. It's during his time with Sanders that Baer conceived and created the Brown Box, out of a growing interest in the idea of connecting a device to a TV screen to play games. This was the seventh iteration of the device. It was named the Brown Box due the wood grain vinyl applied to it, apparently to "make the prototype look more attractive to potential investors." [arcade-history.com]

According to arcade-history.com, the device had six built-in games available, a light-gun game, ping-pong, tennis, volleyball, handball and a "chase" game. The light-gun (which looked an awful lot like a real gun) and ping-pong games are of the most interest, as light guns would become a console and arcade staple for many years, and the ping-pong game had influence on Atari's Pong.

What's most important to talk about with the Brown Box is that Baer wanted to manufacture it into an actual commercial product. If it was just an experiment, I highly doubt we'd be talking about it outside of being a historical oddity akin to Relay Moe. Baer found a buyer in Magnavox, who Sanders licensed the device to to make a commercial version of it. The result of this licensing was the Magnavox Odyssey, released in November 1972 as the first home video game console. Based on the Brown Box, it featured many of the same games and functions of the Brown Box, but also expanded the horizons of the Brown Box by introducing many different games and including physical game pieces to use along with the TV part of the game. In a sense, the Odyssey was a hybrid TV/board game device. But more on that when I get around to reviewing the Odyssey proper.

In my eyes, it's pretty clear that the Brown Box makes Ralph Baer the father of console gaming. He's sometimes referred to as the father of video games in general, but there's others who could argue for that title also. Steve Russell and the other creators of Spacewar!? Nolan Bushnell for creating the first arcade game, Computer Space? Or even John Kemeny's invention of the BASIC programming language, on which most of the first home computer games were built? History is not always so simple. But Baer's contribution cannot be denied, and he most certainly invented the home console.

Now, onto the next game...

Computer Quiz

Ahh, so this is where Computer Space gets its "interesting" marketing style from...

Release Date: 1967

Platform: Arcade 

Genre: Trivia

Developer(s): Nutting Associates, Inc.

Publisher(s): Nutting Associates, Inc.

Okay, first thing to deal with is the listing of this as an arcade game. The arcade existed long before Computer Space rolled around, but they were mostly filled with pinball machines and electromechanical games that featured some 'video elements', per se, such as large projector screens with moving images, but they weren't actual video games in the sense we understand them as being played on a monitor or TV screen. This is the space in which Computer Quiz (also released under the alternate name I.Q. Computer) resides. An arcade game, but not a video game. 

Yes, this game has a screen, used to display the questions and multiple-choice answers, so in some sense one could argue it to be a video game. But most other elements are displayed using more traditional electro-mechanical elements, and there is a second screen for category selection which complicates things even more. The fact that not every aspect of the game appears on the screen disqualifies it from being a proper arcade video game. It's more of a transitional piece.

Here's a close-up of the actual machine.

That being said, why am I even bringing this thing up? Well, in actual fact, it's more about who made it rather than the game itself, as the company that developed it, Nutting Associates, and the two brothers that worked on this game, Bill and Dave Nutting, have left quite a legacy in gaming, particularly in the arcade. 

Computer Quiz was quite a strong seller, due to being able to get around the gambling stigma associated with arcades at the time by being viewed as more of an educational device. Across both the Computer Quiz and I.Q. Computer iterations, it sold almost 8000 units - a seriously impressive number at the time. Nutting Associates produced a couple more games in the late 60s, including a two-player version of Computer Quiz and a sports-themed trivia game, Sports World. Nutting Associates had become quite well-known in this trivia game sphere by the end of the decade.

Things changed for Nutting Associates when, in 1971, a young, budding entrepreneur came to them with a game he wanted to sell. It was unlike anything the company had produced before, and evidently they saw potential in the young man and his game, and agreed to manufacture it for him. Of course, I'm talking about Nolan Bushnell and Computer Space, the first true arcade video game. Computer Space was named such in reference to Computer Quiz. Computer Space didn't sell all that well, with 1500 units sold and minimal profit, and so Bushnell and Nutting parted ways. I suspect Nutting Associates may have regretted that decision, considering how Bushnell's next project turned out.

Nutting Associates continued to be involved in arcade games until 1976, with their last project being Ricochet, a licensed clone of TV Pinball by Exidy. Afterwards the company was sold to William "Si" Redd, and absorbed into video poker company Sircoma. But the story of Nutting Associates doesn't really end there, as Bill's brother, Dave Nutting, forged his own path apart from the family venture. He formed Milwaukee Coin Industries, Inc. in 1971 as an electromechanical game manufacturer, and later the creatively-named Dave Nutting Associates after a falling out with MCI. 

Dave Nutting's biggest contribution to video games is most likely his introduction of microprocessor technology into arcade game development. Microprocessors opened the floodgates of possibility for arcade game development. Prior to their integration, arcade games were developed using discrete components, commonly known as transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL.) This tech was very limited in what it could accomplish, and most games were primitive in both gameplay and graphics. Microprocessors were much simpler to program, and also allowed greater scope and complexity in game design, as well as more complex and animated graphics. 

He demoed the technology to Bally-Midway, who subsequently commissioned him to produce an arcade game with the tech, an adaptation of Taito's Western Gun, which would be released in 1975 as Gun Fight - the first arcade game to use a microprocessor. Dave Nutting Associates effectively became a subsidiary of Bally-Midway from that point onward, developing many of their classic arcade games of the mid-late 70s, most notably Sea Wolf, and also developing their second-generation home console, the Bally Professional Arcade (later known as the Astrocade.) Dave Nutting Associates closed their doors in 1984, I suspect as a result of the video game crash of 1983, with Dave Nutting himself completely quitting video games afterwards. Nutting would pass away in 2020, leaving a substantial legacy in video games that probably doesn't receive the recognition it deserves. He changed the way arcade games were developed completely.

That pretty well sums up these two games (well, technically one is a console) and their developers. While I can't play either games, this post was more about the people who made them, as they are part of the much greater history of video games, and their legacies are significant ones. Look at it like another couple of pieces of the puzzle of video game history being put in place. 

Next post I'll get back into playing some games. I might start taking them one at a time from now on, as the games are starting to get more involved and complex. It also might be easier for me to get posts out more consistently focusing on one game per post. Civil War is the next game on my list anyway, and that's quite a hefty game for the standards of the time, as far as I'm aware.

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#002: Computer Space

That's an... interesting marketing campaign you've got there...

Release Date: November 1971

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Multidirectional Shooter

Developer(s): Syzygy Engineering

Publisher(s): Nutting Associates, Inc.

I think it's time to take a brief (or now unintentionally not-so-brief) break from the Prehistory series and get to playing and ranking some games! Helps that this first game is quite relevant to the most recent Prehistory article... 

Next up after Galaxy Game (the arguably-first arcade game ever made) is Computer Space (the other arguably-first arcade game), the first mass-produced, commercially sold, coin-operated arcade video game. Computer Space was developed by a little company known as Syzygy Engineering. Funky name choice, syzygy is an astronomical term referring to when three or more celestial bodies are lined up straight. What that has to do with video games, I have no idea.

But I digress, Syzygy Engineering was formed by two men whose names may be familiar to some - Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Though the reason you may not recognise the company name was that, after Computer Space was released, they had to change their name, as syzygy was already in use. The name they settled on was a term used in the Japanese board game Go, which Bushnell and Dabney played regularly - Atari. Yes, that Atari. The legendary and pioneering game company that's still around to this day (though whether it's really the same Atari now as back then is another debate entirely.) If we really want to be technical about it, then, we could say that Computer Space is actually Atari's first video game, not Pong.

So now let's have a little look into how Computer Space came to be. Bushnell came up with the idea for Computer Space after playing the legendary Spacewar! on a PDP-6 computer in 1969 (Bushnell had claimed to have seen it earlier at the University of Utah, but it's disputed whether there was actually a computer there that could've run Spacewar! at the time.) 

He felt that Spacewar! might be popular as a coin-operated game (funnily enough, he wasn't the only guy with that idea at this point in time, as we've already seen with Galaxy Game - more on that later.) The problem with his idea was that it just wasn't economically feasible in 1969 - computers were just too expensive. Heck, the PDP-1 which Spacewar! was developed on cost (in today's money) over US$1 million. Was not going to happen. 

By 1971, however, computer prices had dropped enough for the project to be viable (the computer Bushnell and Dabney used cost about $30k - still a pretty penny, mind you.) Lower-cost tech meant that there would have to be compromises in game design, so Computer Space ended up being quite different from Spacewar!. Gravity was simplified, the sun was removed, and the game was changed to one-player against computer-controlled UFOs. A prototype was manufactured by Nutting Associates, a company most well-known at the time for their Computer Quiz trivia game. The prototype's location testing in August 1971 was successful enough to convince Bushnell he was onto something. 

The arcade cabinet going for that 70s sci-fi look

Also during this month, Bushnell discovered that there was another pair that had come up with the same idea as him over at Stanford University. It's a game I've already covered - Bill Pitts & Hugh Tuck's Galaxy Game. Bushnell and those two actually had some dialogue and got to see each other's game. Pitts and Tuck were not all that impressed with Computer Space, seeing their game as a more faithful recreation of Spacewar!. Being faithful to the source does not always a good game make, however, as my review of Galaxy Game details. 

So, after producing four more cabinets for October 1971's Music & Amusement Machines Expo (all in a different colour), and receiving mostly positive feedback, Computer Space went into production in November. All in all, it's estimated around 1500 units were produced. A 2-player version was also produced later, in 1973, which also sold around the same number (created by Steve Bristow, who would eventually go on to work for Atari and develop one of their classic hits, Tank.) How many cabinets survive today is a different story, however. One estimate suggests that only a few hundred cabinets are still out in the wild in a functional or salvageable state.

The 2-player cabinet. Only comes in green.

Computer Space, despite initial positive tests, didn't fare all too well. Apparently four buttons were too much for half-drunk bar patrons to wrap their heads and hands around, and so the game was considered a commercial failure. Bushnell figured out that the problem was that it was exactly three buttons too many, and thus sought to simplify in that direction for his next stab at an arcade game. But that one's a story for another day.

Well, that's the historical component taken care of, so now let's look at the actual game. I must preface by saying that things are a little unusual when it comes to playing video games of Computer Space's vintage. You see, before 1975, microprocessors were not a thing, and therefore all video games were built using discrete components - otherwise known as transistor-to-transistor logic (TTL, the anagram I will be using henceforth for the sake of brevity.) With these TTL games, it's not as simple as dumping the ROM and booting up MAME to play a round or two. There is no ROM. To put it plainly, TTL games are effectively impossible to emulate. Or, at least, are much, much harder to emulate.

With that in mind, how then does one play Computer Space today without access to an actual cabinet or PCB of the game? Fortunately, one such boffin by the name of Mike "Moose" O'Malley thought of this way back in 2005, and produced a simulated version of the game (much akin to the previous simulators I've used in the Prehistory series), which can be downloaded here. His aim was to replicate Computer Space as accurately as possible, and I'd say he did a darn good job of it. It's not perfect by any means, but it's suitable enough for my purposes. His introductory document explains that he had plans to continue to improve the simulator after its v1.0 release, but 20 years on and there's not been a v.1.1, it seems...

Upon opening the simulator, we're met with a screen that attempts to replicate the gameplay area of the actual arcade cabinet, complete with scans of text and instructions actually featured on the arcade cabinet. The start button in the bottom right corner can actually be used to start a game if you prefer, otherwise the fire key (default A) is the default key for starting the game. The right mouse button can be used to bring up the options menu, where all sorts of mechanics and functions can be fiddled with. I tend to leave things as they are for the authentic experience, though I did adjust the controls to spread them out to make things feel better for my hands and make them seem a little closer to the actual cabinet layout.

Upon starting a game, the first thing you'll notice is the sound effects and how... vintage they are. Honestly the game sounds like an old sputtering tractor (whether the actual game made this noise is hard to say, videos of the original hardware don't seem to have it, so take it with a grain of salt.) Strange stuff. There's some analog beeps and boops also, which are high pitched and rather ear-grating, so turning down the volume is recommended. The explosion sound effects have fairly decent impact, so there's one redeeming quality in the sound.

Can be a bit hard to see what's going on here, unfortunately.

If you're at all familiar with Atari's classic Asteroids, Computer Space will look and feel very familiar (I suspect Asteroids was intended as a spiritual successor to Computer Space). The basic gameplay is essentially the same, though the objectives are different. Computer Space simply tasks you with shooting down the pair of UFOs as many times as possible within the time limit, preferably more times than the UFOs shoot you down. To control your rocket ship, you have rotate left, rotate right and thrust buttons and a button to fire missiles. These missiles are controllable with the rotate left and right buttons, which gives you a little advantage over the UFOs. Where you don't have an advantage is in missile range, with the UFOs having a significant advantage in how far their missiles travel before disappearing. Far too often I found my shots just barely out of range despite being rather close while the UFOs casually snipe me across the screen. The UFO's a decent aim, too, though not utterly relentless to the extent that the small UFOs are in Asteroids... those things give me nightmares. So it's a fair enough challenge, the lack of range on your missiles does force you to take risk in getting close enough to strike.

The hitbox on your ship is mildly suspicious... You may be able to just see the UFO's missile passing just above my ship, that counted as a hit.

It must be said that the game controls rather well. While the physics are not Newtonian-based like the source material of Spacewar!, it still feels weighty enough to give that sense of controlling a space ship while not feeling like being stuck in molasses like Galaxy Game's slow speed. Again, very similar to Asteroids, but slightly heavier.

There are a few design issues to be discussed, which seem to be more oversights than anything. The player hitbox is disproportionately large, missiles that should miss are counted as hits. Most notably is the fact that you and the UFOs can respawn on top of each other. Fortunately any collisions award a point to both sides, however you can also respawn close enough to the UFOs for them to instantly snipe you. It happens frequently enough to be an annoyance. I do find the movement of the UFOs to be quite frustrating at times. It's entirely random, but the speed they move at is similar to your ship's top speed, which means that if they keep moving away from you (which they will happily do), shooting them down becomes an exercise in frustration. Finally, the UFOs don't know what screen-wrapping is, either, so they will never attempt to wrap their missiles around in order to hit you, which you can take advantage of by hanging around the edges of the screen and wrapping your own missiles around.

I got stuck on 8 for the remaining 25 seconds. That's how this game goes.

There is one final thing to mention before getting onto the scores for Computer Space, and that's what the game calls "hyperspace." This is a feature that is not included in the simulator. It's got nothing to do with the hyperspace mechanic in Spacewar!, here it's essentially the game's extended play bonus, achieved when your score is higher than the UFO's at the end of the round. The timer is reset, effectively giving you an extra round to boost your high score, only the colours are inverted. So white background with black dots, it's an eyesore, as you could probably imagine. 

Anyway, that's all there is to mention for Computer Space. It's very simple, as you can imagine (though apparently not simple enough for the people of 1971), but it is somewhat enjoyable for what it is. Now, on to the scores!

Time Played: I've clocked in around 2 hours across several years of playing on-and-off, most likely. 

Difficulty: 6

A combination of the UFOs having decent aim, the weighty controls and the short range of your missiles can make Computer Space challenging occasionally. It varies from round to round depending on how nice the UFOs want to be, also.

Game Design: 9

The core design is simple and solid, but has some executional errors with the respawning problem. Missile range could be more balanced as it's more frustrating than it should be.

Controls: 7

Controls are sound, but ship movement is a little on the heavy side. Ergonomically they're not the most comfortable to use, either.

Sound: 2

It's not pleasant at all. Sputtering tractor engine aside, the high-pitched drone chosen for the missiles is ear-piercingly unpleasant. Explosion sounds give one redeeming sound effect.

Graphics: 3

Obviously dated, essentially consisting of a whole bunch of dots arranged on a black background. Except in hyperspace, where it's the reverse and a whole lot worse. The most interesting thing is that there's technically animation on the UFOs. The centre row of dots moves, giving a slight illusory 3D effect, which is actually somewhat ahead of its time. Those "Atari block letters," as I like to call them, are hideous as always.

Functionality: 5

Everything works as intended with no bugs or glitches in sight.

Accessibility: 4

It's quite easy to find the simulator online (an actual arcade cabinet less so), and is pretty easy to understand and play.

"Fun" Factor: 9

Obviously the most subjective category of my scoring system, but I do find Computer Space to be a enjoyable game to play a couple of rounds of on occasion, though nothing more than that. It's simplicity and lack of skill curve don't make it all that enticing to come back to very often, either. Can also be very frustrating if the UFOs don't play nice.

High Score: The best I've managed over the years of playing is 11. I don't play attention to the whole score line, just how many UFOs I managed to shoot down in the 99 seconds.

Overall, this gives Computer Space a final score of 31, which comes out as a percentage as 51.66%. As far as the tier list is concerned, it just misses out on the C-tier, ending with a spot high in the D-tier. It's actually going to be a fair score as far as 70s arcade and console games are concerned. I've played most of the games upcoming through the early-mid 70s quite a bit, so I already have a rough idea of where Computer Space sits in comparison and trust me, this is one of the better arcade/console games from this period.

If you have any interest at all in vintage gaming and haven't given Computer Space a try, I'd highly recommend it, even in spite of my relatively low score. It's a significant piece of gaming history, and I think the whole industry would look very different if it never existed. It's commercial failure led Bushnell to create Pong, so we are indebted to it just for that.

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#001: Galaxy Game

Release Date: September/November, 1971

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Space Combat Simulation

Developer(s): Computer Recreations (Bill Pitts, Hugh Tuck)

Publisher(s): N/A

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:

1. Positive or Negative Gravity
2. Sun or No Sun
3. Slow or Fast Speed
4. 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 Game a 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.

[Ed. Score revisions have led to Galaxy Game getting a boost in score - now standing at 18/70, which is enough to promote it to the E-tier. Read more about the score revisions here and here.]

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