Five pages of original hand-drawn schematics for Atari's second arcade game, Space Race, accomplished in pencil by Allan Alcorn in early 1973, 17 x 11, each identified in the lower right corner, with two signed: "Rocket Ship Matrix, Al Alcorn, 1/2/73," "Game Control, 1/24/73," "Sound Board (2), Space Race, Al Alcorn, 2/1/73," "Space Race Board #2, Score + Display," and "Game Control Circuit." Throughout the drawings, several elements are labeled with basic descriptors-such as "Rockets," "Stars," "Score," "Crash"-while other notations reveal solutions to the practical problems presented by the nascent coin-op arcade cabinet: a "reset" circuit is designed "to stop game when coin chute hangs up." Includes the complete original blue line copy of the final draft of the Space Race schematic, two pages, 34 x 22, identified and dated in the lower corner, "Space Race, Syzygy Co., Al Alcorn, 2/16/73." Folded and in overall fine condition, with light uniform toning.
Accompanied by a letter of provenance signed by Alcorn, in full: "Pong was Atari's first video game product and was immediately a huge success. We built thousands of them but several other coin operated manufacturers who did not have the technology to design video games but they simply copied Pong and sold thousands. Atari became the advanced development team for the rest of the coin op industry who simply stole our ideas. We did not have the resources to stop these copiers but the one thing we did have that they didn't was the ability to design the next game. We decided to build a game that simulated flying a rocket through a moving field of stars. The first player to navigate a certain number of star fields was the winner.
Soon this game was put into production and was the second game that Atari produced. It was not as successful as Pong but it put the rest of the industry on notice that we had more to give than just Pong.
As I designed each functional block of logic I would draw the schematic for that on a B sized sheet of graph paper. This lot consists of five pages that once put together, represented the design for the finished game. Eventually the schematic was re-drawn on one large sheet and became the production release. This set of schematics is unique and drawn by myself."
From the collection of Pong creator Allan Alcorn.
