Space War is a 1977 clone of Cinematronics Space Wars- the first game to use vector graphics technology. The game is based on Spacewar! which was one of the first video games created. Space War and Space Wars are essentially the same game in different cabinets. The designer of the original Space Wars and of vector-based graphic created Space War as well.
Larry Rosenthal invented the new vector technology while a graduate student at MIT. As opposed to raster-scan video games, vector-based games have well-defined lines and edges. Vector technology allows for more moving, independent objects to appear on the screen at once.
After creating Space Wars at Cinematronics, Rosenthal felt that he was not getting paid enough. Rosenthal left Cinematronics taking the vector graphics technology with him. Under his own video game company Vectorbeam, Rosenthal made a copy of Space Wars and aptly named it Space War.
The two-player Space War consists of two spaceships battling in outer-space. The game was made more complex by the introduction of the concept of damage: a ship could be damaged without being fully-annihilated. Space War allowed players to create the rules of their universe: the amount of gravity, the presence of absence of a star, and an open or a closed universe.
Vectorbeam and Rosenthal's technology were eventually bought by Cinematronics. Space Wars was the start of a new generation for Cinematronics. The vector-based graphics became the foundation of Cinematronics games in the early 80s.