The concept of Pong was simple. A small "ball" moves across the screen, bouncing off of the top and bottom edges and the two players each control a "paddle" that slides up and down across their end of the screen. If the ball hits the paddle it bounces back towards the other players side, if it misses the paddle, the other player scores a point (Wikpedia, 2004).
After Nolan Bushnell's disappointment in his first game Computer Space, he along with partner Ted Dabney devised the easier to play game Pong. In an interview, Bushnell explained why Computer Space was a failure. You had to read the instructions before you could play, people didn't want to read instructions. To be successful I had to come up with a game people already knew how to play (Pong Story, 2004).
In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney designed Pong, the first game under the Atari name. Pong only had two instructions, deposit the coin and avoid missing the ball for a high score. Pong was a monolithic paddle game - and curious bar patrons responded like awestruck apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Herz, 1997: 14).
Pong was originally tested in Andy Capp's Tavern, a bar in Sunnyvale, California. When the system was first put into place, only two people took notice of it and started playing. By the next day, however its popularity had grown to the point where people literally were lined up outside the bar the next morning waiting for the place to open.
However, after their success became public Magnavox notified Atari that they already had a patent on the Pong concept. The two companies went to court, the judge found in favour of Magnavox and Atari had to pay $700 000 for the use of the patents. This investment turned out to be worthwhile as by March 1983 Atari had sold between 8000 to 10 000 coin-operated Pong systems (Pong Story, 2004).
Many versions of Pong have been released: Pong Doubles (a four player game), Quadra Pong and Doctor Pong. However, aside from Atari's Pong theme, a slew of Pong clones were released. In the rush to market, Atari did not wait to file for copyright or patents on their unit. Despite Atari's sucess only 1 in 5 Pong style games in arcades were actually made by Atari. These reasons led to the video game crash of 1977 and 1983 (Herz, 1997:16).
In 1975, Atari marked the beginning of a new line: home versions of Pong.
[Videogames_history | Videogames History]]
Reference List
Herz, J. (1997) Joystick Nation: How videogames gobbled our money, won our hearts and rewired our minds, London: Abacus. ISBN 0349107238
Pong Story (2004) Pong Story, retrieved 19 October, 2004, from http://www.pong-story.com
Wikipedia (2004) Pac-Man, retrieved 19 October, 2004, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong
Kimberley Howard 12:02, 22 Oct 2004 (EST)
Kimberley Howard 18:00, 19 Oct 2004 (EST)
Kimberley Howard 18:26, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)
