Galaxy Game

Summary

Galaxy Game is, just ahead of Computer Space, the first video game that can only be played by coin throw and thus also serves commercial purposes. Based on Spacewar! from 1962, Hugh Tuck and Bill Pitts program an extended version of the space game and build two prototypes on their own account, which are installed at Stanford University.

The game runs on a PDP-11 minicomputer, with a console with monitor and controllers connected to it. For both prototypes together, the two inventors spend about $65,000 at the time, which will never be financially profitable.

Until 1979, when the display processor of the second prototype gets a defect, the device is still at Stanford University campus. From 1997 it will be overhauled and stored in the Computer Science Department in Stanford, before it reaches the California Computer History Museum in 2000, where it is still exhibited today.