Space War

Space War for the Atari 2600, released in 1978, is a home adaptation of one of the oldest computer games in existence. The original Spacewar! was written in the early sixties on a university mainframe and became the template for an entire wave of space duels. Atari brought it to a console with a fraction of the memory and had to make do with whatever its video hardware could produce.

The core is a duel between two ships in open space. The ships carry momentum, so they do not steer like a cursor: acceleration must later be cancelled with an opposing burn, and rotating the ship does not change the direction you are actually travelling. Variants that place a gravity well at the centre of the screen add another layer, since the middle of the playfield constantly pulls you in. That physics is what separates the game from a straightforward shooter and is the reason the original impressed people so much.

The cartridge offers a set of variations that alter the rules, the availability of fuel and ammunition, and whether the star is present. Packing multiple rule sets into one engine was the standard way early console games stretched their content, with the console switches selecting the configuration.

On OldGame.cz the game runs directly in your browser with nothing to install. It works best with two people, because a computer opponent running on 1978 hardware has very limited options. As a historical document it remains one of the more interesting titles from the first era of home consoles.