Computer Space is the first commercially sold
Arcade Game, created by
Nolan Bushnell and released in November 1971. It's a one or two player version of
Space War.
Space War had previously been software running on
$20,000 general-purpose hardware; Bushnell's innovation was to use cheap logic chips to create a machine specifically for playing this one game.
Some versions were one-player against two flying saucers, others were
Player Versus Player. It's a simplified version of
Space War, without the planet and gravity. Your ship fires
One Bullet at a Time, and you can guide it by turning your ship. In one-player versions, if you
score more points than the saucers at the end of
90 seconds, you get another 90 seconds of gameplay.
Bushnell created
Computer Space at home, and sold the game to Nutting and Associates, a maker of mechanical coin-op games. It was not a success, because drunks in a bar couldn't understand how to play a game designed for college students. Bushnell left Nutting and founded his own company, Syzygy Corp., later
Atari.
Computer Space provides examples of: