Global Sports: Spacwar! And Why It Is The Greatest Spacewar Game Today

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Spacwar! And Why It Is The Greatest Spacewar Game Today

By Yvonne X. Valentine


One of the best space war games was a digital computer game named Spacewar. The game play involves two players, each player possessing a spaceship with the goal to obliterate the others space ship. Both ships are pulled in by a huge star located in the middle of the screen, which also requires great skills and maneuvering to avoid falling into the pit. A feature called hyperspace can be used when a player is in a hard position in order to return to a random space in the screen, even though this can yield negative consequences when placed in a place that will cause the player to blow up.

A large amount of online space war games have used the basis of Spacewar as an inspiration since it had been released years ago. Some even share the same name only with restructured gameplay. Some are exact clones, only adding a few additional aspects and features to the original game play such as various levels of gravity, various levels of acceleration, missiles that are affected by gravity, fuel levels, and regeneration over time.

In 1971, the arcade version of Spacewar was let out as the Galaxy Game, Computer Space, and Space Wars by Cinematronics in 1977. The mainly victorious of all of the above was Cinematronics. Silas Warner was the first to release a networked version of Spacewar in 1974 titled Orbit War. It added features such as Big Board with allowed players to wait for other opponents to play against with all the unique aspects of the original game.

One of the most complex of all of the computer and console versions of the game is Star Control, which introduces a vast variety of game play frameworks for the basic player vs. player combat system. Senko no Ronde is a modern interpretation of the original Spacewar game, basing its fighting and combat style off of the fighting styles located in the versus section of Street Fighter II. The 2D inertial routing and combat from Spacewar is also motivation for the Escape Velocity series.

Tank by Kee Games and Combat by Atari are a game that are formatted after Spacewar but does not have a primary theme based in a space setting. Both players would be able to control a vehicle with the same controls and aim to score by striking their enemies with a missile. Some believe that this space war game was the inspiration for developers to begin the development of the UNIX system, but a game titled Space Travel was the real inspiration for UNIX.




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