Spacewar Game
📅 1962 ✍️ Steve Russell 🎮 Space combat

Oh, Spacewar!—the granddaddy of video games that started it all! Imagine this: It’s 1962, and a bunch of MIT nerds huddled around a massive PDP-1 mainframe, coding what would become the first-ever digital combat game. You’ve got two pixelated spaceships locked in a cosmic dogfight, orbiting a deadly star that’ll pull you in if you’re not careful. No fancy graphics, no loot boxes—just pure, adrenaline-fueled strategy as you blast your friend (or the rudimentary AI) into space dust.
This isn’t just a game; it’s a piece of history. Spacewar! laid the groundwork for everything from Asteroids to modern space shooters. Sure, by today’s standards, it’s minimalist—but that’s the charm. It’s raw, competitive, and endlessly replayable. If you’ve ever wondered where video games began, fire this up and feel the nostalgia of a time when gaming was born from lines of code and sheer imagination.
Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".
This isn’t just a game; it’s a piece of history. Spacewar! laid the groundwork for everything from Asteroids to modern space shooters. Sure, by today’s standards, it’s minimalist—but that’s the charm. It’s raw, competitive, and endlessly replayable. If you’ve ever wondered where video games began, fire this up and feel the nostalgia of a time when gaming was born from lines of code and sheer imagination.
Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".
You can download this ROM to play Spacewar offline using an MS-DOS Classic Games emulator (Top Emulators).
*This ROM is provided for backup and educational purposes only. Please delete it within 24 hours if you do not own the original cartridge.