The Museum

Every machine below is a playable remake, rebuilt from scratch in RedlineStudio's own engine — the same block-and-script Studio anyone on this site can use. They run with their real hardware limits: Pong wears a 1972 black-and-white TV, Asteroids draws on a vector monitor whose beam dims when a frame asks too much, the 2600 games flicker when a scan line holds more than five moving things, because the real chips did. Where a game's characters or words still belong to someone (a certain carpenter's ape, a mouth that eats dots, a movie studio's film), our remake keeps the mechanics and wears original art and names — the museum teaches the design, not the trademark. And every machine is open source in the Studio: load it, click its brain object, and read how a 1979 arcade board actually thought. Play them free on the Games page; open any of them with Load example… in the Studio — or let the 🎒 Courses teach you game making with them, machine by machine, starting from absolute zero.

Jump to: 1947–1962 · Before the arcade 1971–1974 · The coin-op is born 1975–1977 · The CPU arrives 1978–1980 · The golden age begins 1981–1982 · The peak The Casino

1947–1962 · Before the arcade

For fifteen years, video games were experiments — built by physicists, shown at fairs, played on oscilloscopes and room-sized computers, then usually dismantled. Almost nobody thought they were a product. These nine are the proof that the idea came long before the industry.

CRT Amusement Device 1947 · Goldsmith & MannVECTOR

The oldest patent for an electronic game: a missile-aiming device played on a cathode-ray tube, filed in 1947 by two television engineers. Targets were printed on plastic overlays taped to the glass, because the machine could draw only the beam. It was patented, demonstrated — and never manufactured. Ours puts the targets on screen and keeps the feel: aim the arc, time the burst. 🎒 Course 1 starts here — the history, the logic, and your own first game built on it.

Bertie the Brain 1950 · Josef KatesB&W

A four-meter-tall tic-tac-toe computer built for the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, running on Kates' own miniature "additron" tubes. Crowds queued all summer to lose to it; comedian Danny Kaye famously demanded games until it let him win. When the fair closed, Bertie was taken apart and forgotten. Ours plays the same confident game — beatable only when it chooses kindness.

NIMROD 1951 · FerrantiB&W

Built for the Festival of Britain: a wall of lights that played the mathematical game of Nim — perfectly, because Nim has a known winning strategy built on binary XOR. It was meant to advertise computers, but visitors just wanted to beat it. Our remake's entire brain is one xor() expression, which is the whole history lesson: the first "AI" was one line of math.

Draughts 1951 · Christopher StracheyB&W

Strachey's checkers program for the Ferranti Mark I was among the first games on a general-purpose computer — and among the first programs to use a screen at all, drawing its board on a CRT of glowing dots. Ours keeps mandatory captures, kings, and a board held in one 64-slot list, the way every board game since has secretly worked.

OXO 1952 · Sandy Douglas, EDSACB&W

Written at Cambridge for the EDSAC as part of a PhD on human–computer interaction, OXO drew noughts-and-crosses on the machine's dot-matrix memory display — arguably the first graphical computer game. It played perfectly, so the only way to not lose was to also play perfectly. Ours renders the hollow EDSAC dots and keeps the perfect brain: a loop over a table of winning lines.

Tennis for Two 1958 · William HiginbothamVECTOR

A Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist built a two-player tennis game on an oscilloscope for the lab's public visitors' day — side view, a net, a glowing ball with real gravity. Visitors loved it; the lab dismantled it after two years because the parts were needed. It's the strongest claim to "first video game made purely for fun." Two players, two controls each: angle and hit.

Mouse in the Maze 1959 · MIT TX-0VECTOR

On MIT's TX-0, you drew a maze with a light pen, placed the cheese, and a mouse solved it — and here's the famous part: run it again and the mouse remembers, taking the solved route directly. One of the first programs where the fun was watching a machine learn. Ours keeps the two-run trick; draw cruel mazes and give it a second chance.

Tic-Tac-Toe on TX-0 1959 · MITVECTOR

The TX-0's other game habit: students pitting strategies against the machine. Ours makes the experiment the game — pick which opponent program to run and watch strategies collide, the 1959 hacker pastime of making computers play each other.

Spacewar! 1962 · Steve Russell & MITVECTOR

The one that spread. Written for the PDP-1 by MIT students, Spacewar! had two ships, torpedoes, a star whose gravity bends every trajectory, and a hyperspace panic button that might kill you. It traveled to every lab with a PDP-1 and directly inspired the first two arcade games ever sold. Ours keeps the gravity, the drift, and the dangerous hyperspace — fly it with a friend, like 1962 did.

1971–1974 · The coin-op is born

In 1971 someone finally put a coin slot on the idea. What follows is the first arcade generation: no microprocessors anywhere — these machines were wired logic, circuits that were the game — plus the first home console, and, on university networks, multiplayer games a decade ahead of schedule.

Computer Space 1971 · Nutting AssociatesB&W

The first commercial coin-operated video game, built by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney before they founded Atari — Spacewar! squeezed into a fiberglass cabinet. It confused bar patrons and sold modestly, which taught Bushnell the lesson that built Pong: make it simpler. Ours keeps the saucers, the drift, and the coin-buys-time economy of the original.

Odyssey Table Tennis 1972 · Magnavox / Ralph BaerB&W

The Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console, designed by Ralph Baer — "the father of video games," whose patents Atari later paid for. Its table tennis game had a trick lost to history: holding your controls after the hit curved the ball ("english"). Ours keeps the english. Bring a second player; 1972 homes had no computer opponents.

Pong 1972 · AtariB&W

Allan Alcorn's "training exercise" became the game that started the industry. Its genius is in the paddle: the ball's angle depends on where you hit it, turning two knobs into a sport. The prototype jammed in a Sunnyvale bar because its coin box filled with quarters — the founding legend of the arcade. Ours is tuned to the original's segments, speed-up and serve rhythm, on a 1972 TV.

Space Race 1973 · AtariB&W

Atari's second game: two rockets race upward through drifting debris, and the coin buys time — the center bar is your credit literally draining. Simple, fast, and the first game where dying only costs position. Ours keeps the one-stick-per-rocket controls of the real cabinet.

Gotcha 1973 · AtariB&W

The first maze-chase game — square hunts ring through a maze that constantly rearranges itself. Every later chase game (including 1980's famous one) descends from this loop. Ours keeps the shifting maze and the pursuit; it was a joystick game in 1973, so the on-screen stick is period-correct.

Hunt the Wumpus 1973 · Gregory YobTELETYPE + MAP

Written in BASIC and spread by listing — you typed it in from a magazine. You hunt a monster through a cave of twenty rooms connected like a dodecahedron, navigating by senses alone: a smell, a draft, the flap of bats. The museum has it twice: the teletype original (type M or S and a room number, draw your map on paper, exactly as 1973 played it) and a map version that draws the cave for you.

Gran Trak 10 1974 · AtariB&W

The first racing game with a steering wheel, gearshift and pedals, and the first game to store its graphics in ROM. Famously, an accounting error meant Atari sold each cabinet at a loss — the hit that nearly killed the company. Ours keeps the four-speed box that punishes you for launching in high gear.

Tank 1974 · Kee GamesB&W

Built by Kee Games — secretly Atari's own fake competitor, founded to sell to distributors who demanded exclusives. Two tanks, a maze, and mines that score for your enemy, driven by dual sticks. It was the hit that bailed out Gran Trak's losses and reunited the two companies. Ours keeps the mines, the ricochet-free shells, and the all-stick cabinet feel.

Maze War 1974 · Colley & Thompson, NASA AmesVECTOR

The first first-person shooter, full stop: eyeballs stalking each other through a wireframe maze, written by high-school interns at NASA Ames. It invented the first-person view, the avatar, and being shot from behind by someone you never saw. Our remake builds the corridor view entirely from line objects — and when the enemy's pupil turns red, it's aiming at you.

Maze War Arena 1974 · the networked versionVECTOR

Within months, Maze War machines were cabled together — then put on the ARPANET, making it the first online deathmatch, complete with the first complaints about lag. Our Arena is the museum's 4-player online cabinet: real humans only, one life per round, last eye standing — and it demonstrates the platform's whole multiplayer contract in one readable script.

Spasim 1974 · Jim Bowery, PLATOVECTOR

On the PLATO educational network, Spasim put up to 32 players in one 3D solar system — in 1974, updating about once a second. It's the ancestor of every space MMO. Ours seats eight pilots online, and its projection script is a complete 3D renderer in twenty lines of RedScript — the museum's best proof that "advanced" is just arithmetic.

1975–1977 · The CPU arrives

The microprocessor reached the arcade in 1975 and changed what a game could be — and the same years produced the first moral panic, the first movie-license dodge, and the birth of the text adventure. Where a 1976-style adventure's famous words still belong to their authors, the museum's text games are our own caves written in that style — the parser tricks are the history; the prose is ours.

Western Gun 1975 · Taito, Tomohiro NishikadoB&W

The original Japanese release: two cowboys, cacti that shoot apart (cover is a budget), and rocks that ricochet — a ricochet can drop the man who fired it. All of it hardwired, no CPU, by the designer who would later make Space Invaders. Roam anywhere, shoot the way you face.

Gun Fight 1975 · MidwayB&W

Midway licensed Western Gun for America and handed it to Dave Nutting, who rebuilt it around an Intel 8080 — making Gun Fight the first arcade game to run on a microprocessor. Same duel, new brain: smoother movement, six shots and a long reload. The real cabinet gave each cowboy two joysticks — one walks, one tilts the gun — and so does ours, on a big 800-wide world.

Shark 1975 · Atari ("Horror Games")B&W

Weeks after a certain shark movie ruled the summer, Atari shipped a shark game — through a shell company called Horror Games, invented so any lawsuit would hit an empty box. The design flip is the lesson: the shark is faster than you, so survival is cornering, not speed. Grab fish, turn hard, never swim straight.

Breakout 1976 · AtariB&W

Pong turned single-player: knock a wall down brick by brick. The prototype is Silicon Valley legend — Steve Jobs took the job, Steve Wozniak built the board. The red rows pay seven points, the ball speeds up at milestones, and touching the top wall halves your paddle. A perfect game is exactly 896, and ours honors the number.

Death Race 1976 · ExidyB&W

The first video game moral panic: drive into fleeing "gremlins," and each one caught plants a solid cross that becomes an obstacle. It made 60 Minutes and the National Safety Council, and sold better for it. The museum rates it 13+ — which, by modern standards for blocky, bloodless stick figures, is already generous, and that's the lesson it teaches about rating realism.

Echo Cave 1976 style · a RedlineStudio originalTELETYPE

1976 is the year a cave exploration program named the text-adventure genre. Its words belong to its authors, so the museum built its own cave in that style: a lantern, a bear, five treasures to carry back to the cabin, and a two-word parser (GET LAMP) built from one expression. Load it in the Studio and read how a whole world fits in one brain object.

Night Driver 1976 · AtariB&W

First-person driving at night: the road is pairs of posts rushing out of the dark, and your car is a plastic decal glued to the cabinet glass — the machine never draws it. Ours keeps the decal trick and the physics that shove you outward through curves. The whole 3D renderer is one loop; distance is the score.

Combat 1977 · Atari 2600HOME TV '77

The cartridge that came with the Atari 2600 — for millions of households, the first video game they owned. Tanks, tank-maze with ricochets, biplanes with clouds to hide in — and no computer opponent anywhere, exactly like 1977: bring a friend. Ours runs on the simulated 2600, flicker and all, with 2:16 on the clock.

Undervault 1977 style · a RedlineStudio originalTELETYPE

By 1977 the mainframe adventures were getting smarter, and this original teaches their tricks: a parser that skips articles (TAKE THE OLD LAMP works), TAKE ALL, a lamp that eats battery, and a thief who walks the dark lifting your treasures — his den holds everything he stole, and the sword settles it. Every trick is a dozen readable lines.

1978–1980 · The golden age begins

Space Invaders made video games an economy; color, vector monitors and synthesized speech made them a spectacle. By 1980 the arcade had its icons — and where an icon's characters are still someone's property, the museum honors the year with an original machine built on the same design lessons.

Space Invaders 1978 · Taito, NishikadoARCADE 8-BIT

Nishikado spent a year building it — including designing his own hardware. Fifty-five invaders march as one body, and the famous accelerating heartbeat was an accident: fewer aliens meant less for the CPU to draw, so the survivors sped up. He kept the bug; it became game design. Eroding bunkers, the mystery saucer, 10/20/30 by row — and if they land, it's simply over.

Galaxian 1979 · NamcoARCADE 8-BIT

The Invaders killer, and the first arcade game with true full-color RGB graphics. Its convoy never descends — it sends divers swooping down in arcs, and only divers fire. Everything pays double mid-dive, there are no bunkers, and the flagship escort run is the arcade's first set-piece. Ours keeps the live attract reel and the diving math.

Lunar Lander 1979 · AtariVECTOR

Atari's first vector-monitor game — and a remake even then, of a 1969 text game where you typed burn amounts into a teletype. The coin bought fuel, not lives: run dry mid-descent and physics finishes the play. Land slow, level, and on a pad; the 5× mesa is for the brave. The analog stick is the 1979 thrust lever: half a push is half a burn.

Asteroids 1979 · AtariVECTOR

Atari's best-selling arcade game ever: Spacewar!'s physics with a coin slot. Momentum is the law, rocks split 1→2→4 with the children faster, your four shots inherit your drift, and hyperspace sometimes kills you — a 1962 idea, intact. The small saucer aims. Ours even respawns you the way the real ROM did: only when the center of the screen is safe.

Adventure 1979 · Atari 2600, Warren RobinettHOME TV '77

The first console action-adventure: castles, keys, three dragons, a magnet, a bat with opinions — and one pair of hands, so choosing what to carry is the game. Robinett, denied a credit, hid his name in a secret room: the first famous easter egg. Ours keeps the invisible-dot ritual and hides its own secret the same way. Somewhere there's a wall that remembers.

Star Raiders 1979 · Atari 8-bit, Doug NeubauerARCADE 8-BIT

The killer app of Atari's home computers and the first first-person space war: a cockpit, a galactic chart, hyperwarp that costs energy, and Zylon squadrons that advance on your starbases while you're busy fighting. Dock to refuel, protect the bases, and at the end the computer grades your whole career with a rank — down to GALACTIC COOK.

Rally-X 1980 · NamcoARCADE 8-BIT

Shown beside 1980's maze-chase icon and expected by the industry to outsell it. It didn't — but it gave arcades the scrolling world bigger than the screen, the radar, the smoke screen, and the CHALLENGING STAGE: the bonus round that started bonus rounds. Your car never stops; you only point it.

Sweeper 1980 style · a RedlineStudio originalARCADE 8-BIT

Our original maze-chase, honoring 1980's icon — whose characters remain its maker's. The design lessons are all here and all real: four hunters with four genuine personalities (one chases, one aims ahead of you, one cuts you off, one wanders), power cells that flip the hunt, buffered cornering, and the rhythm the masters called "breathing": press, scatter, press again.

Missile Command 1980 · AtariARCADE 8-BIT

Designer Dave Theurer had nightmares about it. You don't shoot missiles — you detonate a blast where they're going to be. Six cities, thirty shots a wave, warheads that fork, and no way to win: when the last city falls the screen doesn't say GAME OVER, it says THE END. The Cold War, playable.

Battlezone 1980 · AtariVECTOR

The first 3D world anyone stood inside: wireframe tanks on an endless plain, every object projected from your tank's point of view each frame. The U.S. Army commissioned a training version — the first serious "serious game." Geometry is cover: the pyramids stop their shells and yours. Every third kill sends the missile, which doesn't shoot. It rams.

Berzerk 1980 · SternARCADE 8-BIT

The machine that talked — at a reported thousand dollars a word of synthesized speech. Its robots are deadly but clumsy: they shoot each other and walk into the electrified walls, and every self-inflicted robot death pays you. Linger too long and the indestructible smiling enforcer comes through the walls — ours is called THE WARDEN, and it cannot be killed either.

Rogue 1980 · Toy & WichmanTELETYPE

The game that named the roguelike, played in pure text on university UNIX terminals: a new dungeon diced on every run, letters for monsters, and permadeath — hp 0 deletes the character, forever. Ours deals six rooms and stitches corridors in one readable when-tick: the whole dungeon generator, open source in the Studio.

Defender 1980 · WilliamsARCADE 8-BIT

Eugene Jarvis' side-scroller was the most complex game of its day — five buttons and a stick, a planet four screens wide, and humanoids to protect, not just aliens to shoot. Lose a humanoid to a lander and it returns as a mutant hunting you. Brutally hard, and the all-time top-grossing arcade game anyway. Catch a falling humanoid for the best +500 in the museum.

Emberhall 1980 style · a RedlineStudio originalTELETYPE

1980 is when text adventures became a business, sold in zip-lock bags and then in boxes. Our original teaches the commercial generation's polish: a real two-object parser (PUT THE OIL IN THE LAMP), containers that must be opened, a kiln that turns sand into glass, and treasures that score twice — taken, then displayed. SCORE grades you by rank; 400 is perfect.

1981–1982 · The peak

The golden age at full temperature: the arcade's best year ever, the home console's first million-sellers, and the designs — twin-stick, stealth, the CRPG, isometric 3D — that every modern genre still stands on. Tributes here follow the museum's one rule: the mechanics are history, the trademarks are not ours to use.

Scrapyard Climb 1981 style · a RedlineStudio originalARCADE 8-BIT

1981's breakout hit invented the platformer: climb, dodge what's thrown, rescue, repeat. Its carpenter and his ape are Nintendo's, so our machine climbs a scrapyard instead: six girders, nine ladders, a haywire crusher hurling tires down the zigzag, a wrench power-up, and a bonus counter that drains until you hit the OFF switch. A fall is a fall.

Galaga 1981 · NamcoARCADE 8-BIT

The sequel that beat its original: enemies fly in formation before they fight, bosses take two hits, and the tractor beam steals your ship — shoot its captor and it returns to fight beside you as a double-gunned dual fighter, the arcade's first comeback mechanic. Every third wave is a challenging stage; all 24 is a PERFECT 10000.

Frogger 1981 · KonamiARCADE 8-BIT

The sharpest design flip of its year: on the road, everything that moves kills you; on the river, everything that moves is the only thing keeping you alive. Grid hops, turtles that blink before they dive, home bays with real walls (a filled bay is a wall too), and a clock on every crossing. All five home pays 1000.

Sweeper II 1981 style · a mod of our own SweeperARCADE 8-BIT

1981's best-selling arcade game began life as an unauthorized mod of 1980's icon — new mazes, a wandering bonus, smarter randomness — built by outsiders and later made official. The museum reenacts the history on itself: Sweeper II is a mod of our own Sweeper, with four rotating mazes, a bonus that wanders the corridors, and hunters whose every fifth turn is random so no route is ever safe twice.

Castle Wolfenstein 1981 · Muse Software, Silas WarnerARCADE 8-BIT

The ancestor of the stealth genre, on the Apple II: guards see only where they face, so the game is reading cones and slipping behind. Hold up an unsuspecting guard and frisk him; wear the uniform and regular guards walk past — armored sentries see through it. Find the war plans and walk out the great door. Escape without firing a shot for the museum's classiest +500.

Ultima I 1981 · Richard GarriottARCADE 8-BIT

The first chapter of the longest-running RPG saga: a scrolling tile overworld where the world only moves when you do, danger scaling with distance from the castle, towns for food and steel, and three dark dungeons lit three tiles deep. Garriott's tile trick — the world as a redefined character set — is exactly how ours draws it: every tree is a glyph from the engine's character ROM.

Pitfall! 1982 · Activision, David CraneHOME TV '77

255 jungle screens in a 4-kilobyte cartridge — because Crane stored none of them. Each screen is computed from an 8-bit polynomial counter, and our remake runs the same machine: the HUD shows you the byte, and running left literally runs the world's math backward. Vines, croc heads, the underground shortcut, 32 treasures, 3:00 on the clock — a million-seller that proved consoles could do wonders.

Dig Dug 1982 · NamcoARCADE 8-BIT

The screen is solid earth and the maze is whatever you carve — your tunnels are also your weapon. Pump the burrowers until they pop (deeper strata pay more), drop rocks for 1000, and mind the ghosting: they drift through dirt straight at you. Namco's creatures stay Namco's; ours wear the museum's own glyphs and keep every mechanic.

Robotron: 2084 1982 · WilliamsARCADE 8-BIT

Jarvis again, inventing the twin-stick shooter: one stick runs, one fires, and the two never agree. Waves pour in from all sides; the hulks cannot be killed, only pushed, and they are walking straight at the last human family. Saving humans pays 1000, then 2000, up to 5000 a touch — the arcade's purest risk-for-score loop.

Cubit 1982 style · a RedlineStudio originalARCADE 8-BIT

1982's pyramid phenomenon made isometric space and diagonal controls a craze — its orange hero is still Gottlieb's, so ours is an original hopper named with the same kind of pun. Every hop is diagonal (the stick feels turned 45°), the coil climbs after you with real pathfinding, and baiting it off the edge with a flying disc is worth +500, exactly the dance 1982 fell in love with.

Pole Position 1982 · NamcoARCADE 8-BIT

You have to earn the race: one flying qualifying lap, and the machine sends you home if you're slow. Then four laps of a Fuji-style circuit — the long straight, the hairpin that demands real braking, traffic that wrecks you from behind. It was 1983's top-grossing arcade game and the template for every racer since. LO launches; HI pulls 306 km/h.

Zaxxon 1982 · SegaARCADE 8-BIT

The first axonometric 3D arcade game — and the first shooter with altitude. The isometric angle lies to your eyes, so Sega gave you instruments: your shadow on the deck and an altimeter, the only two things that never lie. Thread the lit window in the walls, dodge turret fire that leads your height, and refuel by shooting your own fuel dumps. Famously, authentically hard.

Tron 1982 · Bally MidwayARCADE 8-BIT

Four duels on one credit — light cycles, tanks with banking shells, the tower, the cone — and the rare licensed game that out-earned its own film at the box office. The film is Disney's, so our four duels wear the museum's own glyphs; the mechanics, which is what the cabinet actually sold, are intact. Then all four again, faster.

The Casino

Redline Slots the reference machineARCADE 8-BIT

Not history — plumbing. Redline Slots is the open-source reference for the platform's player-built Casino floor: machines do the show, the platform does the math, with one fixed public paytable (92% return) no owner can touch. Coins can't be bought and can't be cashed out — the floor is 18+ and the pools are for bragging rights. Load it in the Studio to see the whole casino loop in one script.

Why a museum?

Because these 57 machines are a complete course in game design, and they're small enough to actually read. Every one was rebuilt here from the original's documented behavior — hardware quirks included, since half the famous mechanics (Invaders' speed-up, the 2600's flicker, the vector beam's dimming) were hardware quirks. Open any of them in the Studio, press 🧱 To blocks, and read how it thinks — then change a number and make it yours. That's what the museum is for. The Coding Guide starts at zero and ends at online 3D.