Raspberry Pi Pico Spacewar controller brings vintage space combat to the 21st century

If there’s one thing that all Raspberry Pi are good for, it’s emulating classic games but this project doesn’t emulate the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer, instead it emulates the controllers. Today we’re delighted to share with you a cool Pico-powered controller system designed to control an emulator for the 1962 game Spacewar! developed for the PDP-1.

When the past and the present collide! I’m working on a pair of Pi Pico powered Spacewar! controllers for an upcoming exhibition at the Chicago Gamespace. They appear as plug and play USB gamepads that can be used with a Javascript PDP-1 emulator to play an original version of the game from 1962. from r/raspberry_pi

According to Tominator2000, this project was put together to share with others at a convention known as Chicago Gamespace. If you haven’t heard of Spacewar! before, we’ll catch you up to speed. Released in 1962, this game simulates flying through space and blasting oncoming threats using torpedoes. It was created for the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer that was initially developed in 1959 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The controls are operated entirely by just one Raspberry Pi Pico. In the demo video, we get a good look at the hardware setup which currently involves a breadboard, two analog controllers and a pushbutton. Tominator 2000 goes on to explain that the system is programmed to be plug and play and is recognized by devices as a USB gamepad thanks to USB HID emulation.

The screen used for the emulator is round in appearance but is actually square with the edges wrapped in a bezel mimicking the PDP-1. The display has a resolution of 1024 x 1024 which is way more than the original and plenty to replicate the graphics for this classic game.

The Spacewar! game is running on a Javascript-based emulator. The joysticks are driven using a library called PicoGamepad created by a Reddit user known as Jake_at_real_robots. The left joystick is programmed to rotate your vessel while the right stick is responsible for adjusting the thrust. The button is dedicated to firing torpedoes at your opponent.

If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can check out the demo video shared in the original project thread shared to Reddit.