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Seattle’s Living Computers: Museum + Labs marked the 45th anniversary of the 1972 Spacewar! tournament with an Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics on October 19, 2017. The event celebrated a gathering often described as the first video-game tournament—but it was an anniversary event, not a literal recreation: the original players used a PDP-10 at Stanford, while Seattle’s three-player version ran on an IMLAC PDS-1.
What was the first video-game tournament?
In October 1972, about two dozen people gathered around a PDP-10 at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to play Spacewar!. A contemporaneous Rolling Stone account, preserved in the Computer History Museum archive, called it the “First Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics.” GeekWire later framed the gathering as the first-ever gaming tournament.
That “first” is best understood as the description used by those accounts, rather than a claim that every possible kind of game competition has been conclusively ruled out. The sources establish the gathering’s setting and approximate attendance, but not its exact rules, scoring system, or software variant.
What is Spacewar!?
Spacewar! was developed for the PDP-1. The Computer History Museum says Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Wiitanen conceived the game in 1961; Russell wrote its first version, and Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Graetz made significant improvements in spring 1962. The museum describes two players piloting spaceships and trying to destroy one another against a star field, with gameplay shaped by real-world physics.
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In 2017, then-executive director of Living Computers: Museum + Labs Lath Carlson described the game as “arguably one of the most influential video games of all time,” while noting it could not quite claim the title of first video game. Its enduring appeal, he said, came from its gameplay and storytelling.
How did Seattle’s 2017 event differ from the 1972 gathering?
The Seattle museum presented its October 19, 2017 event as a 45th-anniversary celebration. It used a three-player Spacewar! version on an IMLAC PDS-1, with arcade button controls. That was a different machine and setup from the PDP-10 gathering at Stanford; the available accounts do not establish that the Seattle event used the same software build or tournament rules as the original.
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| Detail | 1972 Stanford gathering | 2017 Seattle anniversary event |
|---|---|---|
| Place and date | Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, October 1972, according to the contemporaneous Rolling Stone account | Living Computers: Museum + Labs, Seattle, Thursday, October 19, 2017, according to GeekWire |
| Computer | PDP-10 | IMLAC PDS-1 |
| Reported format | About two dozen people gathered to play; exact rules and player format are not established in the cited account | Three-player version with arcade button controls, as reported by GeekWire |
What else was on display in Seattle?
GeekWire reported that more than 65 restored, operating vintage computers would be accessible during the 2017 event. Its examples spanned different eras and formats:
- Oscilloscope Tennis for Two (1958)
- Computer Space (1971) and Cinematronics Space Wars (1977)
- Atari 2600 Space War (1978), Vectrex Space Wars (1982), and Atari 8-bit Space War (1983)
- DOS Spacewar! (1985) and an eight-player Mazewar setup
This was the event-time lineup reported in 2017; it does not establish what is currently available to play at the venue.
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When and where was the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics?
The Seattle event took place at Living Computers: Museum + Labs, 2245 1st Ave. S., from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, October 19, 2017. GeekWire reported admission at the time as $12 or free for members. These are historical event details, not current scheduling or ticket information.
Carlson said the 1972 tournament helped create a community around video games, and that “many of those bonds and that energy still remains today.” The anniversary event’s name connected the Seattle celebration to that earlier gathering, while its different computer and three-player setup made it a tribute rather than a documented reproduction.
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