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ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. Action game
  2. Advergaming
  3. Arcade machine
  4. Artificial intelligence
  5. Atari Games
  6. Atari Lynx
  7. Audio game
  8. Board games
  9. Browser game
  10. Casual game
  11. Christian video games
  12. Comparison of handheld gaming consoles
  13. Computer and video games
  14. Computer animation
  15. Computer-assisted role-playing game
  16. Computer graphics
  17. Computer role-playing game
  18. Console game
  19. Dr. Mario
  20. Famicom
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  22. Game
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  29. Game classification
  30. Game controller
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  34. Game Developer Magazine
  35. Game development
  36. Game development tool
  37. Game mechanic
  38. Gameplay
  39. Game programmer
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  41. Gamer
  42. Game server browser
  43. Game studies
  44. Gaming convention
  45. Golden Age of Arcade Games
  46. Handheld game console
  47. History of computer and video games
  48. History of video game consoles
  49. History of video games
  50. Hotseat
  51. Internet gaming
  52. Joystick
  53. LAN gaming center
  54. List of books about computer and video games
  55. List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
  56. List of gaming topics
  57. Mobile game
  58. Multiplayer game
  59. N-Gage
  60. Nintendo 64
  61. Nintendo DS
  62. Nintendo GameCube
  63. Personal computer game
  64. Pinball
  65. Play-by-mail game
  66. Play-by-post game
  67. PlayStation 3
  68. PlayStation Portable
  69. Pong
  70. Programming game
  71. Puzzle computer game
  72. Real-time strategy
  73. Sega Dreamcast
  74. Sega Saturn
  75. Serious game
  76. Simulation game
  77. Single player
  78. Sony PlayStation
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  80. Strategy game
  81. Strategy guide
  82. Super Nintendo Entertainment System
  83. Synthespian
  84. Tabletop role-playing game
  85. Teamspeak
  86. Tetris
  87. Tokyo Game Show
  88. Video game center
  89. Video game console
  90. Video game crash of 1983
  91. Video game industry
  92. Video game publisher
  93. Wargame
  94. Wii
  95. Xbox 360

 



VIDEO & COMPUTER GAMES
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Pong

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
Pong helped bring computerized video games into everyday life.
Pong helped bring computerized video games into everyday life.

PONG is a video game by Atari, based on the sport of table tennis. "Pong" (lowercase) is the title of an entire genre of PONG derived arcade units, consoles and games based on the "ball" and "paddle" characteristic of game play. Though PONG is commonly thought to be the world's first video arcade game, Computer Space actually preceded it. The original PONG arcade unit was released by Atari on November 29, 1972. It was certainly the first video game to win widespread popularity, in both its arcade and home console versions; in that sense, it acted as the linchpin for the initial boom of industry in each of those sectors.

Its creators were among the first to recognize that technology had evolved sufficiently to make such a game possible. Displaying graphics on a video or television screen and reacting in real time to user input required more computer power than 1960s consumer products could afford. Even in 1970, the computing power of a modern cell phone would have required a mainframe computer the size of a small apartment.

However, by drawing only two lines for paddles, a line for the net and a square for the ball, Pong was playable as a graphical game on the technology of the early 1970s and could soon be sold as units to consumers.

History

The original Atari upright cabinet. As is clear in the picture, the monitor was an ordinary black-and-white television set.
The original Atari upright cabinet. As is clear in the picture, the monitor was an ordinary black-and-white television set.

While not the first electronic game, the earliest form of an electronic ping-pong game dates back as a game played on an oscilloscope, by William A. Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958. His game was titled Tennis for Two.

In 1966, Ralph Baer, then working for Sanders Associates, made a design for running simple computer games over a television set. His ideas were patented, and he created a game resembling PONG proper, except with slightly more complex controls. In 1970, Baer demonstrated his video game system to corporate heads at Magnavox, who became convinced that such a device would help sell more Magnavox television sets. Magnavox and Sanders Associates joined forces, with Baer and his patents at the center, to develop a stand-alone unit called the Odyssey 1TL200 to be sold to consumers for use in the home.

In the spring of 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey system was on display at a demonstration in Burlingame, California where Nolan Bushnell played the Odyssey's ping-pong game for the first time. Soon afterwards Nolan and a friend formed a new company, Atari. Nolan envisioned creating a driving game for arcades. He hired an electronic engineer, Al Alcorn, fresh out of college. Concerned that the game he envisioned would be too complex for his new employee, Nolan first directed him to build a ping-pong game. The game Alcorn created was so much fun that Nolan decided to go ahead and market it. Since the name Ping-Pong was already trademarked, they settled on simply calling it PONG. Atari, which in Japanese means "to aim/target" had not been envisioned as a manufacturer but only a developer of arcade games. Nolan set about demonstrating his new game to several amusement manufacturers. PONG was conceived as a game for two players, unlike pinball which was the dominant arcade game at the time. Amusement industry experts were unsure about PONG's potential, and initially there was little interest in the product [1] [2]

There was a need for the game to undergo a field test, and before departing on a trip to Chicago (Nolan had appointments scheduled with pinball makers Williams and Bally/Midway), he and Alcorn added a coin operated switch to the machine so that it could be used as an arcade game.

The system was initially tested in a small bar in Grass Valley, California and Andy Capp's Tavern, a bar in Sunnyvale, California. Within a day, the game's popularity had grown to the point where people lined up outside the bar waiting for the place to open.

Before long, the unit broke down, and the bar's owner called Alcorn at home to have him remove the game. When he opened the unit to start a game, he quickly discovered the problem - the milk carton placed inside to catch the coins was overflowing with quarters to the point that the coin switch was jammed. Alcorn immediately called Bushnell in Chicago to tell him about the game's outstanding success, and Nolan decided they should manufacture PONG themselves.

Two weeks later, Magnavox learned of PONG, and notified Atari that they already had a patent on the concept. The two companies went to court. Magnavox was able to produce witnesses who had seen Nolan playing the Odyssey's ping-pong game, and they had a guestbook from the event which Nolan had signed. Magnavox and Atari eventually settled when Atari paid the television manufacturer $700,000 to license the patents.

Atari Super PONG, a refinement with more options
Atari Super PONG, a refinement with more options

The home version of PONG was conceived in 1973 and designed by Al Alcorn, Bob Brown, and Harold Lee in 1975. Atari demonstrated the unit at the 1975 Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Because of the failure of the Odyssey (the unit was discontinued in 1974), retail outlets weren't interested by Atari's home console. These systems had on-screen digital scoring, something absent from other versions of PONG. However, soon after the show, Atari was contacted by Tom Quinn, sporting goods buyer for Sears. Quinn met with Nolan Bushnell, and asked how many units Atari could produce in time for the holiday shopping season. Bushnell said they could probably produce 75,000. Quinn told them Sears wanted double that many units, and they would pay to boost production to that level. In return, Sears would be the exclusive seller of Atari PONG.

Sears Tele-Games Pong IV
Sears Tele-Games Pong IV

Christmas 1975 was the most popular season for PONG, with customers lined up outside Sears, waiting for shipments to arrive. That season's popularity caught the attention of Al Franken and Tom Davis during Saturday Night Live's first year; the comedy duo wrote and voiced several segments for SNL in which no actors were visible; all viewers saw was an active Pong game display, looking just like it would if they were playing the game themselves. As the game proceeded, Franken and Davis would talk to each other as friends, commenting only occasionally about the game itself (though the conversation of the players clearly had an occasional detrimental impact on their game skills).

By 1977 the home version of PONG had become so popular that it was copied by other manufacturers until the market was overrun with cloned machines. The flooded market could not absorb more Pong systems -- real or cloned -- and the resulting "crash" in demand contributed to Fairchild's decision to exit the market.

By the end of March 1983, Atari had sold between 8,000 to 10,000 coin-operated PONG systems.

Versions

Many versions of PONG were released, including Pong Doubles (a four-player PONG), Quadrapong (also four-player) and Doctor Pong. Aside from Atari's arcade units, there were a slew of PONG clones as well. In their rush to market, Atari did not wait to file for copyrights or patents on their unit. Despite Atari's success, only one in five Pong style games in arcades were actually made by them. To reduce this problem, Atari purposely mismarked the chips in genuine Pong units to confuse anyone who tried to clone one.

The Pong consoles remained popular in the US until the late 1970s and in Europe until the early 1980s.

Ports

Beyond the home versions, Pong has also been remade several times, including a version for PlayStation. It has been included in the recent "TV Games" collections, which are console-on-a-chip systems that feature "classic" games from the Atari 2600 era.

Pong also served as a source of inspiration for Atari's game Breakout (1976) which was itself updated successfully ten years later by Taito under the name Arkanoid.

Pong is available on Arcade Classics for the Sega Mega Drive.

The original version (with Cabinet Art) and an updated version of Pong is available in the Atari Anthology Video Game for the Playstation 2 and the Xbox.

The original Pong is challenging to faithfully emulate because it uses 7400 chips and discrete logic rather than a CPU for game logic.

Popular culture

  • The opening song to Frank Black's album Teenager of the Year is titled "What Ever Happened to Pong?" The lyrics tell a story of two brothers who scam older men by placing wagers on Pong competitions at bars.
  • Tennis star Andy Roddick starred in a commercial for American Express in which his opponent was Pong (his trainer advised him "he returns everything"). Roddick seems stumped as to how to defeat the bar, until he realizes the bar has no forward movement, and hits a drop shot over the net. The commercial Stop Pong also spawned a website, where the player, as Roddick, tries to beat Pong in a five-minute game.
  • In an episode of King of the Hill, Peggy and Bobby are busy throughout the entire episode playing Pong. Without a pause button they fall asleep with it still bouncing back and forth.

See also

  • History of computer and video games
  • Pong project

External links

  • PONG-Story, the most comprehensive site about PONG and its origins.
  • PONG article at The Dot Eaters, a history of PONG and its development
  • The KLOV entry on PONG
  • List of home Pong systems (in 1976 General Instruments, released the AY-3-8500 chip capable of running PONG which led to an explosion of consumer consoles, a large number of which are listed on the site)
  • Pong at the Open Directory Project
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong"