OXO

a.k.a. Noughts and Crosses

created and published by Cambridge University in 1952, running on EDSAC
type: board game
genre: Traditional game, Tic-Tac-Toe
perspective: other fixed camera
player options: single player
languages: eng
3.5/5
GFXControlsA.I.Difficulty

Personal review

As this is the earliest possible game that can be emulated on a modern system, it is the earliest I have tried. (Actually NIM on the NIMROD computer is even earlier but who wants to download the BeOS just for that) Since this was the only computer game of its time, I would have to say it was a very average experience.


# 2011-01-28 10:29:23

Descriptions (2)

OXO is a video game developed by A S Douglas in 1952 which simulates a game of noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe). It was one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. Douglas programmed the game as part of a thesis on human-computer interaction at the University of Cambridge.

The program was written for the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). EDSAC was one of the first stored-program computers, with memory that could be read from or written to, and had three small cathode ray tube screens to display the state of the memory; Douglas re-purposed one screen to demonstrate portraying other information to the user, such as the state of a noughts and crosses game. After the game served its purpose, it was discarded on the original hardware but later successfully reconstructed.

OXO, along with a draughts game by Christopher Strachey completed around the same time, is one of the earliest known games to display visuals on an electronic screen. Under some definitions, it thus may qualify as the first video game, though other definitions exclude it due to its lack of moving or real-time updating graphics.

Becoro # 2023-06-21 09:20:56 - source
OXO is a video game developed by A S Douglas in 1952 which simulates a game of noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe).

diddydongXD # 2021-06-29 12:14:05 - source

Technical specs

display: Monotone

Editor note

Was displayed on a 35x16 pixel CTR. 1 player, used an AI computer opponent. This game is copyrighted by A.S. Douglas.
The Edsac Simulator

Zerothis - # 2006

Related games

has this clone
OXO (Linux)

Contributors (7)

AndreaD
teran01
zerothis
Sanguine
freshbread
diddydongXD
Becoro

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OXO in-game screen.
OXO
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