Sometimes the best ideas really are the simplest, and compared with the complexity of today’s video games or even some of its early pioneering contemporaries, that was the basis of Pong. Released on Nov. 29, 1972, Pong was—in the words of Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell—“a game people already knew how to play, something so simple that any drunk in any bar could play.” (In 2022, scientists even taught 800,000 living brain cells in a petri dish how to play Pong.) Learn all about it in this edition of Tech Time Warp.
The birth of Pong
The first Pong installation was at Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Al Alcorn set up the game using a 12″ black-and-white TV, a wooden cube covered in faux woodgrain plastic, and a coinbox from an old pinball machine. Tavern patrons liked the game for its simple strategy: Don’t miss the ball. Within days, Alcorn had to return to Andy Capp’s to empty the coinbox.
Alcorn had installed Pong at the request of his bosses, Atari co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. The duo had founded Atari (initially called Syzygy) when they began working on Computer Space, a simplified arcade version of the mainframe computer game Spacewar!
The Computer Space game had enjoyed modest success and proved technologically innovative thanks to its use of a built-in board rather than a microprocessor, allowing for cost-effective production. However, the average bar patron had found that Computer Space too complicated to master while inebriated.
Pong’s success let Atari to expand and increase production of an arcade version quickly. Then, in 1975, Atari partnered with Sears to sell a home version of Pong for a home gaming system sold under Sears’ house brand, Tele-Game.
Within a year, Atari was selling its own home gaming console. This is largely due in part to the success and popularity of Pong.
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