Game Design Origins - Game Design Essentials - page 20

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In 1971, the United States was still three years away from exiting the Vietnam
War, CBS debuted its hit TV show All in the Family , Apollo 15 completed the
fourth manned mission to the moon, and Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck created
Galaxy Game, the first coin-operated video game, at Stanford University.
Bill and Hugh made the game on a 16-bit minicomputer called a DEC PDP-11
and it was later adapted to a coin-operated console using a DEC PDP-11/20
with vector displays. Only one unit was made, which was installed at Stanford's
Tresidder Union; however, it was modified to accommodate up to eight con-
soles, allowing gamers to play against each other. The game was patterned after
Spacewar!
Figure 1.11 shows a photograph of Galaxy Game, which was restored in 1997
and acquired by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
In 2010, it was loaned to Google and resides at the company's headquarters
campus—Googleplex—also in Mountain View.
Two months after Galaxy Game debuted, the first commercial video arcade
game was released by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney; it was also based on
Spacewar! The game, called Computer Space, was an interesting first attempt at
producing and marketing arcade games; however, even with $3 million in sales,
it was a failure.

arcade game is
another term for a
coin-operated game.

FiGuRe 1.11 Galaxy Game , the first coin-operated video game