Pong

a.k.a. ポン

created and published by Atari in 1972-11-29, running on Arcade

type: sport, action/reflex
genre: Pong-like
perspective: bird's-eye
player options: shared-screen

languages: eng

3.5/5

Find at ADB

Description

Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.

Becoro # 2023-04-06 22:26:06 - source

Technical specs

software: Emulated on MAME,

hardware: Custom arcade hardware,

display: Monotone

Editor note

1500 units were made of Bushnell's second attempt. A simple two-way controlled tennis game with the immortal opening 8 words: "Insert coin. Avoid missing ball for high score." First successful video game, it made a huge amount of money for Atari.

demographic-female. In 1972, society did not completly view buying a drink for someone to show interest as an equal transacrion along male and female lines. As in, some men would be off-put having a women buy them a drink and some women were reluctant to do so. But no social norms restricted anyone from inviting a game partner to share a session they had purchased. Additionally, Bushnel was keenly aware that the local univesity was traing up its first large batch of females to graduate with business degrees. An invitation to play Pong not only avoided an outdated social issue, it was cheaper than a drink. Bushnell also knew science had dermined that females tend to have significantly better fine motor skills and would often experience the empowerment of winning against a male opponent (in addition to witnessing this himself with Spacewar).