A strange little side quest
Put Russian Drunken Boxers next to the history of combat sports and a few unexpected connections appear. Boxing was part of the ancient Olympic Games by 688 BC, long before gloves, weight classes, or timed rounds existed in anything like their modern form. The broader history adds one more wrinkle. Spacewar! appeared on MIT's PDP-1 in 1962 and became one of the earliest influential computer games shared among programmers. It is a good reminder that simple game mechanics can carry a surprising amount of history.
