Space Wars

CINEMATRONICS

Space wars

Space Wars has the distinction of being the first commercial vector arcade game. Its introduction in 1997 ushered in a new era of high resolution games from Cinematronics based upon the hardware licensed from Larry Rosenthal. This commercial port of the PDP-1 game was a huge success and was quickly imitated by Atari (Orbit, 1978 raster). In addition to the Cinematronics cabinet pictured to the left, at least two other versions are known to exist. One was a much more stylish and slightly re-titled Space War from Vectorbeam. A two player cocktail version with the same title was discovered by Clay Cowgill.

Brief History

· Released as VBS-1 by Cinematronics in 1977

· Sound board generates analog thrust, explosion, and fire sounds

· CCPU board consists of two 2k masked ROMs

One player controls a wedge shaped ship and the other a needle vessel whose inspiration must be Star Trek’s Enterprise. The premise of the game is simply to destroy the opposing player as many times as possible, by whatever means necessary, within the allotted time limit. This can include using your cannon or even ramming an opponent under desperate circumstances. Each player steers his ship on the playfield using thrust, rotate left, rotate right, or hyperspace.

After coining up, players can choose which game options to select and optionally select game modifications using a numeric keypad located above the center of the control panel. There is also a reset button on the center of the control panel for exigent circumstances such as a player missing his ship or if both players are dead in the water. Of course the “aggressive” player, aka the cheater, can hit this button to escape when severely pressed.

A lone, indestructible asteroid floats through the playfield. It could be argued that the game designers for Atari’s Asteriods had more than a casual acquaintance with Space Wars.