Yep, I’m old. I played Pong.
Then Asteroids came along and blew it away.
First played Pong in the Pinball arcades.
Then a local pizza joint got a version where you could move the paddle anywhere you wanted on your side of the net.
And it was all over after that.
She uses a lot of words and letters to say “I’m stupid”.
I recall some iteration of the game that a neighbor kid had where you could induce some “english” to the ball by swiping the paddle as you hit it. He knew about it and I didn’t and, man, he kicked my ass for a few rounds.
Your optimism is wonderful. What makes you think that there will be anyone still talking in 50 years?
If hes a gen x’er, he could have grown up with it.
1964-1980, roughly is where they count them.
Ah, those ubiquitous plastic tables. Shelves too.
I don’t remember the wood grain on the console. I must have had the cheap one.
This was trumped by “tanks”.
It was too easy to bump the console right as the "ball" got to your opponent's paddle.
No, I did not master that tactic.
Super simple but took some pretty serious eye-hand coordination when you had the speed cranked up (seems like it had three speeds). Plus the social aspect mentioned in the article — head to head against another person. A close game could be truly exciting for both players and “crowd.”
A friend had the early Atari and I played at his house. It’s hard for younger people to appreciate the novelty of Pong when it came out. That was part of the attraction, and it was fun to be able to play this simple game on a TV screen. I played and liked a lot of the older games, but I don’t have the patience or the coordination for the newer ones. Maybe that’s the secret of Pong’s popularity: anyone could play it.
My parents had a Pong box on a TV in the early 80s. I played it a few times, but it was indeed boring. Never have cared for video games except for a few card games.
He also has a place in the history of video games for his 1958 creation of Tennis for Two, the first interactive analog computer game and one of the first electronic games to use a graphical display.Give credit where credit is due.
Space Invaders
Pong was great. I love eye-hand coordination games. I got too good at Asteroids. I could play for 30 minutes on a quarter and then give the live game to someone waiting.
Pac Man !!!
We had Pong on our submarine in the late 70s to the mid-80s. Played it sometimes and it was okay, but yes it was pretty slow and boring.