First ever video game "SPACE WAR"

Space war (stylized "Space war!") is one of the earliest digital computer games. It is a two-player game, with each player taking control of a starship and attempting to destroy the other. A star in the center of the screen pulls on both ships and requires maneuvering to avoid falling into it. In an emergency, a player can enter hyperspace to return at a random location on the screen, but only at the risk of exploding if it is used too often.

The basic gameplay of Spacewar involves two armed spaceships called "the needle" and "the wedge" attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. The ships fire missiles that are unaffected by gravity (due to a lack of processing time). Each ship has a limited number of missiles and a limited supply of fuel. Each player controls one of the ships, and must attempt to simultaneously shoot at the other ship and avoid colliding with the star. The hyperspace feature can be used as a last-ditch means to evade enemy missiles, but the reentry from hyperspace would occur at a random location and there is an increasing probability of the ship exploding with each use.

Player controls include clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, thrust, fire, and hyperspace. Initially these were controlled using the front-panel test switches, with four switches for each player, but these proved to wear out very quickly under normal gameplay, and the location of the switches left one player off to one side of the CRT display and visually disadvantaged as a result.Most sites used custom control boxes wired into the same switches, although joysticks and other inputs were also used.