Two ships, the Needle and the Wedge, fight around a heavy star. The star's gravity pulls the ships but not the torpedoes, and space wraps around the edges of the screen. Each ship has 32 torpedoes, limited fuel and 8 hyperspace jumps, each riskier than the last. Win the rounds to win the match, against the computer (Rookie, Pro or Legend) or a friend on the same keyboard.
Spacewar! was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. It was first realized on the PDP-1 in 1962 by Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Martin Graetz, together with Alan Kotok, Steve Piner, and Robert A Saunders. Spacewar! is in the public domain, but this credit paragraph must accompany all distributed versions of the program.
This version is new code by RetroGM Arcade, after the rules of Spacewar! 3.1 as documented in Norbert Landsteiner's Inside Spacewar!. To see the original program run on an emulated PDP-1, visit the Computer History Museum.