OXO

Gameplay of what is considered to be the first digital computer game ever: OXO, a version of Noughts and Crosses for the early EDSAC computer built at the University of Cambridge.

Video is taken from the EdsacPC emulator running the original game code by Alexander S. Douglas, written in 1952. The text output in the top right would have been printed on paper by a teleprinter. User input was handled with a rotary dial like the one displayed to the bottom right. The emulation is faster than the program would have run on the original EDSAC, the clock above the dial shows how long the calculations (and the loading time in particular) would have taken on an original system.

The display to the top left is a CRT with 35x16 pixels, directly displaying the state of one of the mercury delay line memories. The memory is manipulated so that the CRT displays the playing field and the player moves. The second player is controlled by the EDSAC itself, and is programmed to win whenever possible.

Search the web:
"EdsacPC" to download the emulator with a lot of example programs, including OXO.
"EDSAC99" for a page by the University of Cambridge with lots of historical information and photographs on the EDSAC computer.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• edsac
• edsacpc
• cambridge
• university
• noughts
• crosses
• oxo
• first
• video
• game
• computer
• 1952

[tannerchase19]

is this a game?

[cavegames]

It is! It was the first time you could really play tic-tac-toe without a human opponent... so in a way it is the beginning of the lonely basement videogame nerd culture! ;)

[FlyByPC]

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." Cool emulator -- nice to see the history of computing being preserved.

[Robinerd]

yey! Want that game:) I dont think my GF

9600GT is compatible :'( ok jokes aside, thanks OXO for making my life to what it became (SPOILER: computers involved)

[cavegames]

@TheBritishLegions A game running on an analogue computer is still a computer game... but yes, not as we know them today. It doesn't really change the question of the "first" computer game though, since by what we know now the first analogue computer game seems to have been built several years after the first digital one.

[TheBritishLegions]

@cavegames

A computer game is digital not analogue..

So this is the first in terms of a computer game as wee see today

[LordGeorgeRodney]

@cavegames dam us Brits invent everything!!

[cavegames]

@LordGeorgeRodney Eurocannibal was referring to a mistake in my original description, which I have since fixed. It said that OXO was the first computer game in general, which it wasn't - Goldsmith's was a computer game before it, even though an analogue one.

I think the description is messed up anyway though, NIMROD from 1951 was a digital computer game as well, just without an actual screen.

[LordGeorgeRodney]

@Eurocannibal ER NO!

That was a CRT game!

OXO was first digital computer game ever

hence ..computer...digital

[ShannaPondanna]

better than fallout new vegas

[nicknicksiren]

Shoulda used a square.

[pocho31]

Graphics suck...

[tigerkidtre]

id play over and over just to hear all those weird noises 

[BoyzNTheHoodSadEndin]

This is better then the xbox