Space War

The Good
With two players this game can be fun for awhile. A few of the variations add game-changing features.

The Bad
Poor graphics and sound. Nothing very exciting about this cart. Combat offers similar gameplay with more variety and more fun.

The Bottom Line
This game is purportedly based on the grandfather of all video games, Spacewar! Not having ever seen, much less played, Spacewar!, I can neither verify nor deny the assertion. The game is, however, quite rudimentary. You control a small triangle, your spaceship, and, depending on the game variation, either try to shoot the other triangle or try to run into a moving sprite, a "docking module." Different settings allow you to refuel and rearm at a centrally located sprite, the "Starbase," or to be gravitationally drawn toward a centrally located sprite, the "Space Sun," that will destroy your ship.

Gameplay can actually be quite speedy by Atari 2600 standards (indeed, you can speed up so much that you become unable to fire missiles) and quite challenging due to the somewhat unusual controls. (Pressing up on the joystick accelerates your ship, pressing left or right rotates the ship's heading, down makes your ship disappear.)

Between Spacewar!'s early 1960's birth and Atari's introduction of this game in 1978, clearly games had improved in variety, complexity and appearance. Space War, however, demonstrates very little of that improvement. The graphics are a rather poor effort, only a step above ASCII, and the sound is nearly nonexistent.

The gameplay is similar to Combat, but without the variety that added so much to the Combat experience. In this game, instead of different vehicles battling on different battlefields, you have two triangles battling on a blank screen. While the variations that add a gravitational sun do provide some variety, this is not nearly enough to justify Space War's existence.

The best feature of this game is, in my opinion, its speed. With this cart you can send your ship zipping out-of-control across the screen, shooting wildly. No Atari 2600 game to this point had allowed this sort of action. Unfortunately, simple game speed and a moderately inventive variation isn't enough to make this game any more than temporarily amusing.

As a note, if you look carefully you might just see a familiar friend from Asteroids in this game. (Hint: he's a triangle.)

The Good
Once you get the driving technique, your space ship can be quite maneuverable. The idea is simple. It will keep going in one direction until you give it a thrust the opposite way. So you can adjust its speed and direction just like you would do in a real vessel. My favorite feature was "Space Sun" which offers some good challenge whatever game you pick, but you REALLY need to master your joystick to really enjoy it. The limited fuel and ammo features contribute well to the complexity of the game.

The Bad
It takes a little while to get used to the controls in order to move your ship. Like many early Atari games, you better have a partner to play Space War. Single playing merely offered me some grounds for practice, but no real fun. Again in this game, the sound and the graphical appearance are quite annoying. But hey, we're still in the very early stages of computer gaming!

The Bottom Line
Space War offers a lot of features and possibilities. The game can be played alone or with another player. During single player games, the clock becomes your main opponent. In some options, the "Warp Drive" allows the ship to reappear at the other side of the screen. Otherwise, your moves are limited by "Galaxy boundaries". Hyperspace allows your ship to disappear while it travels, so you can surprise your opponent before you shoot. "Space Sun" simulates a gravity center so your ship will always tend to move towards it, increasing the difficulty level of your maneuvers. In the Space War games, your goal is to shoot at your enemy, whereas in the Space Shuttle games, you need to prove you're a good pilot and try to connect to a Space Module.