Before there was Space X and Tesla, there was Blastar. And now, thanks to a Google software engineer, you can fire up the video game Elon Musk wrote at age 12.
According to the Verge, Google’s Tomas Lloret Llinares rebuilt the code to work in HTML5. Blastar was mentioned in Ashlee Vance’s biography, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, the game was one of the first signs that little Musk was onto great things.
Blastar is a sci-fi inspired game that won Musk $500 when South African trade rag PC and Office Technology published it in 1984. According to Vance’s book, “In this game you have destroy an alien space freighter, which is carrying deadly Hydrogen Bombs and Status Beam Machines.”
On a side note, Vance’s book is the perfect beach read for techies: part mad scientist, space cowboys and nail-biting scenes through navigating Silicon Valley’s shark-filled waters, it will keep you entertained for hours.
