Hackaday Retro - 03 Oct 2026

A lot of the retrocomputing world is focused on the 1980s, and for good reason- the home computer revolution was in full swing in that decade, and there is a veritable Cambrian Explosion of capable hardware to play with, emulate or recreate. There's plenty of retro to look back to before that halcyon decade, though, as [Michael Gardi]'s port of Lunar Lander to the PDP-1 reminds us.

Both Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and the game Lunar Lander are probably iconic enough in their own right to need no introduction, but there's actually a connection between them. While many people think the game started with Atari's 1979 arcade cabinet, the first version- then only text based, and called the Lunar Landing Game-actually dates back 10 years before that, and was dreamed up at DEC on a PDP-8. If you're of a certain vintage, odds are, you probably typed in the BASIC version of the Lunar Landing Game at some point.

This is not that game. Despite the 1959 PDP-1 being more restricted, hardware-wise, than the PDP-8, [Michael Gardi] manages to get Lunar Lander in all of its graphical glory running on the PDP-1. Of course, if you've seen SpaceWar you know DEC's first minicomputer can handle the graphics. You can play the emulated version online, if you'd like, or download it yourself from the link above. There is one PDP-1 that survives in working order, and [Michael] hopes to get the chance to run it there one day on the machine that started hacker culture. We wish him luck!

In the meantime, this may be the most "retro" project in our ongoing retrocomputer contest. There's no special prize for that superlative, but if you can do older, have at 'er! There are three weeks left to go back in time and claim both bragging rights and fabulous prizes.

[image: 2026 Hackaday Retrocomputing Contest]

More Hackaday Retro | Headlines

Original: https://hackaday.com/2026/10/02/2026-retrocomputing-challenge-lunar-lander-on-the-pdp-1/