Spacewar! (was Re: Laser display...)

Ethan Dicks ethan.dicks at gmail.com
Thu Feb 17 12:39:12 CST 2005


On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:13:03 -0800 (PST), Vintage Computer Festival
<vcf at siconic.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005, Eric Smith wrote:
> Baer makes the entirely arbitrary assertion that Tennis for Two was not a
> videogame because "it can't be played on a standard home TV set".
.
.
.
> He goes on to say that "by definition, video games use video displays"
> which he goes on to qualify as "ordinary TV sets or TV monitors".  This is
> like saying a Guppy isn't a fish because it isn't a Trout.

Indeed... according to his definition, vector games like Asteroids,
Star Castle, Star Wars,
Battlezone, etc., are "computer games", not "video games", because
they don't use
rasterized output.  Rather a fine hair to split, I'd say.

And how about Vectrex?  Clearly a home unit, and clearly not playable on a home
TV set.

-ethan



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