Pong

Pong
An upright cabinet of Pong.
Developer(s)	Atari Inc.
Publisher(s)	Atari Inc.
Designer(s)	Allan Alcorn
Series	Pong
Platform(s)	Arcade
Release date(s)	NA 1972 JP 1973
Genre(s)	Sports game
Input methods	2 analog paddles
Cabinet	Upright
CPU	Discrete
Sound	Monaural
Display	Vertical orientation, black-and-white raster display, standard resolution

Pong is a first generation video game^[1] released originally as a coin-operated arcade game by Atari Inc. on November 29, 1972.^[2] Pong is based on the sport of table tennis (or "ping pong"), and named after the sound generated by the circuitry when the ball is hit.^[3] The word Pong is a registered trademark of Atari Interactive,^[4][5][6] while the term "pong" is used to describe the genre of "bat and ball" video games.

Contrary to popular belief, Pong was not the world's first video arcade game (Computer Space, by Nutting Associates, was released in 1971).^[7] However, Pong was the first video game to achieve widespread popularity in both the arcade and home console markets, and it is credited with launching the initial boom in the video game industry. The popularity of Pong also led to a successful patent infringement lawsuit from the makers of an earlier video game for the Magnavox Odyssey.

Gameplay

The two paddles return the ball back and forth. The score is kept by the numbers at the top of the screen.

Pong is a two-dimensional sports game which simulates table tennis. The player controls an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left side of the screen, and can compete against either a computer controlled opponent or another player which controls a second paddle on the opposing side. Players use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth. The aim is for a player to earn more points than the opponent, which are earned when one fails to return the ball to the other.^[8][9]

Development and history

Pong was the first game developed by Atari Inc., founded in June 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.^[10][11] After producing Computer Space, Bushnell decided to form a company to produce more games by licensing the ideas to other companies. Their first contract was with Bally Technologies for a driving game.^[12][9] Soon after the founding, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn for his experience with electrical engineering and computer science; Nolan and Dabney also had previously worked with him at Ampex. Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn had no experience with video games.^[13] To acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise.^[13][14] Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, and asked Alcorn to create a simple game with one moving spot, two paddles, and digits for score keeping.^[13] The project was inspired by a game included in the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey—in May 1972, Bushnell visited the Magnavox Profit Caravan in Burlingame, California where he played the Magnavox Odyssey demonstration, specifically the table tennis game.^[15][16]

Alcorn first examined Bushnell's schematics for Computer Space, but found them to be illegible. He went on to create his own designs based on his knowledge of transistor–transistor logic and Bushnell's game. Feeling the basic game was too boring, Alcorn added features to give the game more appeal. He divided the paddle into segments to change the ball's angle of return. For example, the center segments return the ball a 180° angle, while the outer segments return the ball at a 45° angle. He also made the ball accelerate the more it was returned back and forth between paddles; missing the ball reset the speed.^[9] Another feature was that the in-game paddles could not reach the top of screen. This was caused by a simple circuit which had an inherent defect. Instead of dedicating time to fixing the defect, Alcorn decided it gave the game more difficulty and helped limit the time the game could be played; he imagined two skilled players being able to play forever otherwise.^[13]

Three months into development, Bushnell told Alcorn he wanted the game to feature realistic sound effects and a roaring crowd.^[13][17] Dabney also wanted the game to "boo" and "hiss" when a player lost a round. Alcorn was running out of room on the circuit board and did not know how to create such sounds with digital circuits. He inspected the sync generator and discovered it could generate different tones.^[13][9] To construct the prototype, Alcorn purchased a black and white television set from a local Payless store and placed it into a 4ft wooden cabinet. He soldered the wires into boards to create necessary circuitry. The prototype impressed Bushnell and Dabney so much that they felt it could be a profitable product and decided to test its marketability.^[9]

Atari had established a pinball route comprised of coffee shops, a local bar, and Stanford University's Student Union to generate steady income.^[11] In September 1972, Bushnell and Alcorn installed the Pong prototype at the local bar, Andy Capp's Tavern; they selected the bar because of their good working relation with the bar's manager, Bill Gattis. They placed the prototype on one of the tables near the other entertainment machines: a jukebox, pinball machines, and Computer Space. The game was well received the first night and its popularity continued to grow over the next one and a half weeks. Bushnell then went on a business trip to Chicago to demonstrate Pong to executives at Bally and Midway Manufacturing;^[18] he intended to use Pong to fulfill his contract with Bally, rather than the driving game.^[9] A few days later, the prototype began exhibiting complications and Gattis contacted Alcorn to fix it. Upon inspecting the machine, Alcorn discovered the mechanisms had jammed from an overflow of quarters. After hearing about the game's success, Bushnell decided it would be more profitable for Atari to manufacture the game rather than license it, but had already piqued Bally and Midway's interest. He decided to inform the two groups that the other was not interested—Bushnell told the Bally executives that the Midway executives did not want it and vice versa—to preserve the relationships for future dealings. Upon hearing this, the two groups declined Bushnell's offer.^[18]

Lawsuit from Magnavox

The success of Pong attracted the attention of Ralph Baer, the inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, and his employer, Sanders Associates. Sanders had an agreement with Magnavox to handle the Odyssey's sublicensing, which included dealing with infringment on their exclusive rights. However, Magnavox had not pursued legal action against Atari and numerous other companies which released Pong clones.^[19] Sanders applied pressure for three years, and in 1975 Magnavox filed suit against Atari, Bally Midway, and Chicago Dynamics.^[19][20] Magnavox argued that Atari had infringed on Baer's patents and his concept of electronic ping-pong. Sanders had kept detailed records of the Odyssey's design process dating back to 1966. Other documents presented included depositions from witnesses and a signed guest book that demonstrated Bushnell had played the Odyssey's table tennis game prior to releasing Pong.^[19][21]

After considering his options, Bushnell decided to settle with Magnavox out of court. Bushnell's lawyer felt they could win, however, he estimated legal costs of US$1.5 million, which would have exceeded Atari's funds. Magnavox offered Atari an agreement to become a licensee for US$700,000. Other companies producing Pong clones—Atari's competitors—would have to pay royalties. In addition, Magnavox would obtain the rights to Atari products developed over the next year.^[19][21] Magnavox continued to pursue legal action against the other companies, and proceedings began shortly after Atari's settlement in June 1976. The first case took place at the United States District Court in Chicago, with Judge John Grady presiding.^[19][20][21] To avoid Magnavox obtaining rights to their products, Atari decided to delay the release of their products for a year. They also withheld information from Magnavox's attorneys during visits to their facilities.^[21]

Home consoles

Atari's Pong console, released through Sears in 1975. The original Sears Catalog advertisement is included.

The idea for a home console version of Pong was conceived in 1973 and a prototype was designed by Al Alcorn, Bob Brown and Harold Lee during 1975. The project was named Darlene after a female co-worker at Atari.^[22] Pong had some important differences from the original Magnavox Odyssey, which had been discontinued in 1974. The Odyssey used discrete electronic components as a legacy of its 1960s roots, while Pong was based on an integrated circuit containing many components on a single chip. The chip in the home version of Pong was the most complex developed for a consumer product at the time. Pong boasted on-screen digital scoring, something the Odyssey lacked, but while the Odyssey offered a range of different games through plug-in circuit boards, the first Pong console played the table tennis game only. The original arcade Pong had black and white graphics, while the 1975 console version had color graphics.^[23] The Odyssey lacked sounds and Pong made a distinctive bleeping noise through an internal loudspeaker each time the ball was hit. The Odyssey could add spin to the tennis ball through a button on its controllers, while Pong could add eight levels of spin automatically depending on which part of the bat the ball hit. This was a feature found in the arcade version of Pong, and helped to produce varied play. In both the Odyssey and Pong, when the ball hit the top or bottom of the screen it bounced back in, a feature more like squash than tennis. The player gained a point in Pong when the opposing player failed to return the ball. Since domestic televisions in the 1970s lacked audiovisual inputs, the Pong console was connected to the television by converting its output to a radio frequency signal that was fed in through the antenna screws. Some consumers had been confused by the name of the Magnavox Odyssey, believing that it would work only with Magnavox televisions. However, both the Odyssey and Pong were compatible with any make of television that had antenna screws.^[22][24]

The Pong console was demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1975. The buyers from the major retail outlets showed little interest, believing that the public was not sufficiently interested in video games for the home. However, soon after the show Atari contacted Tom Quinn, the sporting goods buyer for Sears, Roebuck and Company. Quinn was familiar with the Pong game found in arcades and bars, and decided to take a chance on the new console. He met with Nolan Bushnell and asked how many units Atari could produce in time for the Christmas holiday season. Bushnell reckoned that they could produce 75,000, but Quinn wanted double that number of units and offered to pay to boost production to that level. In return, Sears would become the exclusive retailer of Pong under the Sears Tele-Games label.^[22]

Christmas 1975 turned out to be the most successful period for sales of Pong home consoles, with customers lined up outside Sears stores waiting for new shipments of the game to arrive. The first consoles retailed at $100, the equivalent of around $400 at 2007 prices. The burgeoning popularity of Pong caught the attention of Al Franken and Tom Davis during the first year of the television show Saturday Night Live. The comedy duo wrote and voiced several segments in which no actors were visible, and all that viewers saw was a Pong game in progress looking just as it would if they were playing the game themselves. Franken and Davis would talk to one other as friends, rarely mentioning the game itself, and with the conversation occasionally having a detrimental impact on their game skills.^[22]

A consequence of the popularity of Pong was that enthusiasts would play the game for hours at a time on their home consoles, leading to damage to the television screen being used as the display. Since the white lines forming the tennis court were shown constantly, they could become burned into the phosphor coating on the cathode ray tube of the television, causing irreparable damage to the screen. After a number of incidents where this occurred, the instruction books of tennis video games mentioned the risk and advised against extended play, or suggested that the brightness and contrast controls of the television be turned down in order to reduce the risk of damage. Another feature of constant play was the tendency of the paddle controllers to wear out and require replacement.^[25]

Impact and legacy

The coin-operated Pong games manufactured by Atari were a great success, and by the end of March 1973, between 8,000 and 10,000 of the units had been sold.^[2] However, Atari did not obtain a patent on its system until November 1973, and by this time numerous other manufacturers had produced versions of ping-pong video games.^[26] According to Bushnell, Atari produced a total of 38,000 Pong coin-ops^[27] and sold upwards of 35,000,^[28]although taking into account the large number of clones, it is estimated that over 100,000 coin-ops were sold.^[29]

Cloned versions of the Pong home console soon appeared, with the AY-3-8500 chip launched by General Instrument in 1976 offering a range of pong-style games to any manufacturer. By 1977 the market was saturated by both more consoles from Atari and Magnavox as well cloned pong consoles, and demand was in decline. Seeking a quick exit from the industry, many companies sold off their games at discount prices. The result was the first crash in the video game market, an event later echoed by the Video game crash of 1983. The public's interest in pong consoles had waned by the late 1970s, and the units had ceased production by the early 1980s. By this time, more sophisticated games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man had become available, and the sound and graphics capabilities of pong consoles were seen as old-fashioned. The technology of the home video game market had also evolved in 1976 when the manufacturer Fairchild released its new programmable console, the Video Entertainment System or VES.^[30] Unlike the dedicated pong consoles which had a fixed number of built-in games, the VES could offer a range of games via plug-in ROM cartridges. Atari launched its own programmable system in October 1977, the Atari Video Computer System or VCS. This later became known as the Atari 2600, and the use of plug-in cartridges was the defining feature of the second generation video consoles that dominated the market during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In 1999, the artist Pierre Huyghe created an installation entitled 'Atari Light', in which two people are invited to use handheld gaming devices to play a game of Pong on an illuminated ceiling. The work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2001.

Remakes and sequels

Many versions of Pong were released, including Pong Doubles (a four-player variant), Quadrapong (also four-player), Super Pong and Doctor Pong. In 1976 Atari released Breakout, a single player variation of Pong where the object of the game is to remove bricks from a wall by hitting them with a ball. Breakout was updated successfully in 1986 by the Taito Corporation under the name Arkanoid.

Pong has been reissued for a range of modern platforms, including:

• There is a version for the PlayStation, and it has been included in the recent TV Games collections, which are console-on-a-chip systems featuring classic games from the Atari 2600 era.

• Pong is also available on Arcade Classics for the Sega Genesis.

• A simulation of the original version with cabinet art and an updated version of Pong are available in the Atari Anthology video game for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. The original Pong cannot be emulated by today's computing technology because it uses 7400 chips and discrete logic rather than a modern central processing unit.^[31]

• Atari's 1991 arcade game Off the Wall features a competitive bonus round that plays exactly like a round of Pong.

• In the Atari game Test Drive Overdrive, users can play Pong when the game is loading. In single-player mode the user play against the computer, but in multi-player mode the user can play against the other player.

• In the PSP game Atari Classics Evolved it can be playable in two versions; a port of the original version and an updated version of the game which includes updated ports of Atari's Pinball, Air Hockey, etc. that were originally available in its "Home Pong" console variations in the 70's.

In popular culture

Pong's role as the first successful video game has led to a number of appearances in popular culture, including:

• The opening song of Frank Black's album Teenager of the Year is entitled Whatever Happened to Pong? The lyrics detail the story of two brothers who place wagers on Pong competitions in bars.^[32]
• Tennis player Andy Roddick starred in a 2006 commercial for American Express in which his opponent was Pong. His trainer advises him: "He returns everything." Roddick seems stumped as to how to defeat the computer's bat, until he realizes that it has no forward movement. He then hits a drop shot over the net in order to win. The commercial was called Stop Pong and spawned a website where the player, as Roddick, tries to beat Pong in a five minute game.^[33]
• In the 1976 film Silent Movie, Dom Deluise and Marty Feldman tinker with the hospital bedside monitor to which the studio chief is hooked up, causing its display to turn into a Pong game.
• In a season two episode of The Simpsons, Treehouse of Horror, the Simpsons are abducted by aliens Kang and Kodos who show off their own version of Pong referring to it as a high-tech version of what humans call table tennis. This is Simpsons episode 7F04, first airing on October 25, 1990.
• In the King of the Hill episode "It Ain't Over 'Til The Fat Neighbor Sings" which first aired May 15, 2005, Peggy and Bobby are busy throughout the entire episode playing Pong. Without a pause button, they fall asleep with the ball bouncing back and forth.
• In an episode of That '70s Show, Kelso and Red try to make the game more challenging by tinkering with the console and making the paddles smaller.
• In the 2008 Pixar movie WALL-E, WALL-E attempts to play Pong with EVE, but she has already gone into standby mode.
• The fifth episode ever of Saturday Night Live airing November 15, 1975 included a two minute bit that featured an active Pong screen while two men (off-camera) discussed their mid-term exam results as they played the game.
• In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, the Lord of Games face is a TV screen with a game of Pong on it.

Further reading

• Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari by Scott Cohen ISBN 978-0070115439
• Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames by Leonard Herman ISBN 978-0964384828
• Digital Play: The interaction of Technology, Culture and Marketing by Stephen Kline et al. ISBN 9 780773 525917

See also

• History of video games

References

External links

• [1] An interview with Alan Alcorn on the design of Pong.
• pong-story.com, the most comprehensive site about Pong and its origins.
• The Atari Museum An in-depth look at Atari and its history
• Pong and its rivalry with the Magnavox Odyssey
• Pong article at The Dot Eaters, a history of Pong and its development
• Atari's Pong - A legend begins
• Pong at the Open Directory Project