"It's f*ckin' pong."
-Joseph Stalin
-Joseph Stalin
Half-Century Challenge Series: https://www.backloggd.com/u/C_F/list/half-century-challenge/
HCC #3 = Pong (1972)
If there is any game that can be called synonymous with video games, it's Pong. When the term "video game" was first coined, it was because the average gamer experience consisted of playing something like tennis or ping pong on their TV. It's no coincidence the term "video game" came into mass usage during the early 1970s, right when Pong exploded.
The importance of Pong cannot be overstated. Dedicated Pong consoles, arcade cabinets, Atari ports, etc all rose into prominence. The idea of porting a game a million times for accessibility, and the sheer mass appeal Pong had over prior 0 player games or text adventures? It's breathtaking how much came out of the game. Remember, just 10 years prior if one wanted to play Space War, there were only a couple locations on earth where they could do so. Pong was even designed with controllers in mind, an early prototype to things like the Atari controller and by proxy controllers by companies like Nintendo or Sega.
One could even call it the genesis point of multiplayer gaming. Being able to play against both AI and another human was beyond novel. Fighting game arcade modes? They owe their thanks to Pong. Which in hindsight, makes it funny that my first time playing Pong was via the embedded port in Mortal Kombat 2. You see, in Mortal Kombat 2 if you win 250 matches in a row, you get to play one round of pong. So one evening as a child, I spent what must have been 2 or 3 hours killing the fake player 2 in my copy of MK2, just to play Pong for 30 seconds. I felt like I had been massively trolled.
That tangent aside, I brought up mini consoles earlier. Indeed, even Nintendo got their start in the game industry with the Color TV Game 6 which was directly inspired by Pong's success. Let alone the NES Classic Mini and SNES Classic Mini some half century later.
It would be easy for me to look at Pong and go "who gives a fuck" but honestly, I can't help but admire this abstract world with nothing more than a few white pixels. Everything comes from something. Even if it's not the most fun game to a newcomer in 2024, it still has plenty of usages. After all, it's a great project to recreate in languages like GML for the sake of learning game development. In fact, a friend and I actually did that for a narrative driven minigame compilation game a while back. https://c-fhacks.itch.io/aikon
With its sheer influence on the industry, the fact it's so helpful for learning game development, and that it's perfectly playable, Pong deserves this score. Perhaps even higher.
Next time: Maze (1973)
HCC #3 = Pong (1972)
If there is any game that can be called synonymous with video games, it's Pong. When the term "video game" was first coined, it was because the average gamer experience consisted of playing something like tennis or ping pong on their TV. It's no coincidence the term "video game" came into mass usage during the early 1970s, right when Pong exploded.
The importance of Pong cannot be overstated. Dedicated Pong consoles, arcade cabinets, Atari ports, etc all rose into prominence. The idea of porting a game a million times for accessibility, and the sheer mass appeal Pong had over prior 0 player games or text adventures? It's breathtaking how much came out of the game. Remember, just 10 years prior if one wanted to play Space War, there were only a couple locations on earth where they could do so. Pong was even designed with controllers in mind, an early prototype to things like the Atari controller and by proxy controllers by companies like Nintendo or Sega.
One could even call it the genesis point of multiplayer gaming. Being able to play against both AI and another human was beyond novel. Fighting game arcade modes? They owe their thanks to Pong. Which in hindsight, makes it funny that my first time playing Pong was via the embedded port in Mortal Kombat 2. You see, in Mortal Kombat 2 if you win 250 matches in a row, you get to play one round of pong. So one evening as a child, I spent what must have been 2 or 3 hours killing the fake player 2 in my copy of MK2, just to play Pong for 30 seconds. I felt like I had been massively trolled.
That tangent aside, I brought up mini consoles earlier. Indeed, even Nintendo got their start in the game industry with the Color TV Game 6 which was directly inspired by Pong's success. Let alone the NES Classic Mini and SNES Classic Mini some half century later.
It would be easy for me to look at Pong and go "who gives a fuck" but honestly, I can't help but admire this abstract world with nothing more than a few white pixels. Everything comes from something. Even if it's not the most fun game to a newcomer in 2024, it still has plenty of usages. After all, it's a great project to recreate in languages like GML for the sake of learning game development. In fact, a friend and I actually did that for a narrative driven minigame compilation game a while back. https://c-fhacks.itch.io/aikon
With its sheer influence on the industry, the fact it's so helpful for learning game development, and that it's perfectly playable, Pong deserves this score. Perhaps even higher.
Next time: Maze (1973)