Space Travel (video game)

Space Travel was an early computer game that simulated a trip in the solar system. The development of this game was a crucial motivation for work on Unix. It was written in 1969 on an early version of Multics (GE 645 ) by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie on a PDP -7 to test with the aim of the operating system kernel. It was later ported to Fortran and gecos systems.

To use them as such, the game was very expensive at the time - on a 36 -bit mainframe cost a hour approx $ 75.

Space Travel is sometimes also with the game Spacewar! confused; also a well-known, but successful space simulation.

Strictly speaking, this is not a game but a simulation, with which you can travel to different planets and moons. A simple, graphical 2D view from a bird's eye view is displayed; Coordinates can be displayed in the upper right corner. The control is done via defined keyboard shortcuts for direction, thrust and zoom factor. Collision detection was not yet available.

Space Travel was the first Unix - game and thus the first, which was run on different platforms. Simulation games such as the 1982, published by Commodore for the Commodore 64 as a ROM module Visible Solar System based on Space Travel.