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Manufacturer:
Cinematronics
Year: 1977 Class: Wide Release Genre: Space Type: Videogame Monitor:
Number of Simultaneous Players: 2 Maximum number of Players: 2 Gameplay: Competitive Control Panel Layout: Multiple Player Controls:
Sound: Amplified Mono (one channel) |
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Space Wars DescriptionTwo player only game where each player flies around space and tries to shoot each other. Features include partial damage, modifying gravity and inertia. Controls are fire, thrust, rotate left and right, hyperspace and reset.Know anything more about this game? Cabinet InformationThere were three different cabinet styles for this game. The Cinematronic upright cabinets have two lighted marquees; one on the top of the game and one below the monitor and above the control panel -- white text on a black background with red trim. Lots of text for instructions. The side art was simply a blue vertical strip that said "SPACE WARS".The Vectorbeam upright was slightly smaller and did not have a lighted marquee, but it did have the graphic images of each of the ships on the marquee. The side art consisted of a two foot square sticker with a graphic showing one ship blasting another. The table version had fake woodgrain surfaces, with a monitor bezel that showed ships fighting. Game PlayTimed play. The player with the largest number of kills wins. After a kill, the victorious player will wait for 5 seconds before the next round begins. During that time he can kill himself and give the other kill for the other guy. Hitting the reset button will start the next round of battle.MiscellaneousWWW: http://www.multigame.com/spacewar.htmlThis game was the first graphic, animated computer game. In 1961 DEC shipped their first computer, the PDP-1, to MIT. There, a small group of friends at MIT decided to write some demoware for the machine that would use the supplied vector monitor. The game was released as Spacewar in 1962, becoming an instant hit. It was later distributed by DEC with all PDP-1's and found itself installed at universities around the world. The result was a huge number of modified versions, many of these modifications can be found as user options in the Cinematronics version. Nutting's Computer Space and Atari's Orbit were based on the same concept, but these games were raster implementations instead of vector. The Vectorbeam version of this game is called Space War, not Space Wars. Scarcity in collections (VAPS.org)Common - There are 27 known instances of this game owned by one of our 900 members. Of these, 25 of them are original dedicated machines, and 2 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.Of the 52,013 video games (3,346 unique) tracked by the Video Game Preservation Society, this game ranks a 23 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most commonly seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on ownership records. Wanted - There are 3 VAPS members currently looking for this game. Rarity is NOT necessarily an indication of value. Some common games show up as very rare here because collectors don't want them (they are common because arcade operators might be sitting on tons of them in warehouses), while some fairly scarce games are grabbed by collectors every time they show up. Additionally, some games made in the last 5 years are still making money for operators and are thus not yet affordable to the typical collector. For a clue to value, compare how many people have this game vs. how many people want this game and then click on the eBay links to help determine an accurate price range. TechnicalCinematronics used a custom vector monitor. The monitor had a parallel interface and had digital to analog converters in the monitor cage.TriviaThis game has the honor of being the first Black and White Vector arcade game. The designer of the game saw Space Wars in a research lab running on a minicomputer and felt that he had to have one of his own. So over the period of a few years he built the prototype of the game out of easily available parts. He did not use a microprocessor because he could not afford it, so he built his own. He eventually teamed up with others to form Cinematronics, and the basic design of Space Wars was used in about a dozen other games including Solar Quest, Tail Gunner and Star Castle.eBay ListingsClick here to automatically search eBay's Arcade, Jukebox, and Pinball categories for the Space Wars Videogame machine and items related to it.Click here to automatically search eBay's Arcade, Jukebox, and Pinball categories for machines and parts made by Cinematronics . Alternatively, check out the IAM/KLOV custom report of the hottest coin-op machines on eBay, powered by Ace.com (updated throughoutthe day).
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