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When i visited the Computer History Museum in MV a while ago there happened to be a live play session going on with the original hardware, with a bunch of excited people in this little room (the door had to be closed to create enough darkness to make that old screen visible).

I didn't get to play, but that was okay. Watching a bunch of (really polite) strangers huddled together, all excited about playing/watching this first graphical computer game was reward enough.

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When I wrote the original Restoration Proposal for the CHM's pdp-1 in 2003, along with Ace engineers Joe Fredrick (h/w) and Eric Smith (s/w), we envisioned Spacewar! running and being demonstrated to ever-new generations of folks. Hearing your story is heartwarming, as we were hoping others would be similarly rewarded. Come back again and play some.

Not well-publicized: Every 5th Saturday of the months that have 5th Saturdays we hold a Spacewar! Tournament, and the prizes are Spacewar! T-shirts signed by Steve Russell and Peter Sampson (Steve wrote the main game and had help from Shag and a few others; Peter added a realistic star field, showing what one would see outside in Cambridge MA).

We ran Spacewar! for the first time during the restore on Feb 29, 2005. So we're coming up soon on 13 years...

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