This
week at Flashbak, I also remembered Pong, a game
from Atari that was described as having revolutionized “amusement games” in
the 1970s.
Here’s
a snippet and the url: (http://flashbak.com/product-revolutionized-amusement-game-industry-remembering-ataris-pong-1972-51027/
)
“If
memory serves, my first reckoning with the video game revolution -- home or
arcade -- came in a now-defunct department store in Totowa, New Jersey, called
Big Guys.
There,
on Saturday nights, perhaps once a month, my parents would buy my sister and me
root beer floats from the ice cream soda fountain, and then we would all proceed
to the store’s mid-way where my folks battled it out at a bright yellow arcade
cabinet: Atari’s Pong
Created
by Allan Alcorn for Atari and released in November of 1972, Pong was advertised as a “new product…a new concept…a new company.”
Atari
also billed itself as an organization “now
integrating digital computers, video technology, and laser films into a host of
new game breakthroughs.”
The
game and the gameplay itself seem primitive by 2016 standards, but both were
amazing in the 1970s. The game is
basically a top-down view of a ping-pong table with two paddles (controllable
by the users), and a “dot” mimicking the action of a bouncing, ricocheting ball. Winners with the high-score would win.
Before
long -- just two or three years, actually -- Atari released a home console
devoted exclusively to Pong through Sears Department Stores. I remember my
parents debating whether or not to buy it, but finances precluded a purchase at
that time…”
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