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PONG

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Computer & Video games

   PONG is a video game released originally as an arcade coin-op by Atari
   Inc. on November 29, 1972. PONG is based on the sport of table tennis,
   and named after the sound generated by the circuitry when the ball is
   hit. Atari's PONG is spelled in capital letters and is a registered
   trademark of Atari Interactive, while the spelling Pong is used to
   describe the entire genre of "bat and ball" video games. Although PONG
   is often regarded as the world's first video arcade game, Computer
   Space had been launched a year earlier in 1971. PONG was the first
   video game to achieve widespread popularity in both arcade and home
   console versions, and launched the initial boom in the video game
   industry.

   Displaying animated graphics on a television screen and reacting in
   real time to user input would have required more computing power than
   1960s consumer products could deliver. And although technology had
   progressed significantly by 1970, the simplest tasks performed by a
   modern-day cell phone still would have required a mainframe computer
   the size of a small apartment.

   Despite this, PONG's creators recognized that technology had evolved
   sufficiently to make video games a practical proposition: By
   restricting the graphics to just one line per paddle, a dotted line for
   the net, and a square for the ball, PONG could be played on the
   technology available in the early 1970s and console versions
   manufactured for home use.

History

   The original Atari upright cabinet. As can be seen in the picture, the
   monitor was an ordinary black-and-white television set.
   The original Atari upright cabinet. As can be seen in the picture, the
   monitor was an ordinary black-and-white television set.

   While not the first electronic game, the earliest form of an electronic
   ping-pong game dates back as a game played on an oscilloscope, by
   William A. Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958.
   His game was titled Tennis for Two.

   In 1966, Ralph Baer, then working for Sanders Associates, made a design
   for running simple computer games over a television set. His ideas were
   patented, and he created a game resembling PONG proper, except with
   slightly more complex controls. In 1970, Baer demonstrated his video
   game system to corporate heads at Magnavox, who became convinced that
   such a device would help sell more Magnavox television sets. Magnavox
   and Sanders Associates joined forces, with Baer and his patents at the
   centre, to develop a stand-alone unit called the Odyssey 1TL200 to be
   sold to consumers for use in the home.

   In the spring of 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey system was on display at a
   demonstration in Burlingame, California where Nolan Bushnell played the
   Odyssey's ping-pong game for the first time. Soon afterwards Bushnell
   and a friend formed a new company, Atari. Bushnell envisioned creating
   a driving game for arcades. He hired an electronic engineer, Al Alcorn,
   fresh out of college. Concerned that the game he envisioned would be
   too complex for his new employee, Bushnell first directed him to build
   a ping-pong game. The game Alcorn created was so much fun that Bushnell
   decided to go ahead and market it. Since the name Ping-Pong was already
   trademarked, they settled on simply calling it PONG. Atari, which in
   Japanese means "to aim/target" had not been envisioned as a
   manufacturer but only a developer of arcade games. Bushnell set about
   demonstrating his new game to several amusement manufacturers. PONG was
   conceived as a game for two players, unlike pinball which was the
   dominant arcade game at the time. Amusement industry experts were
   unsure about PONG's potential, and initially there was little interest
   in the product There was a need for the game to undergo a field test,
   and before departing on a trip to Chicago (Bushnell had appointments
   scheduled with pinball makers Williams and Bally/Midway), he and Alcorn
   added a coin operated switch to the machine so that it could be used as
   an arcade game.

   The system was initially tested in a small bar in Grass Valley,
   California and Andy Capp's Tavern, a bar in Sunnyvale, California.
   Within a day, the game's popularity had grown to the point where people
   lined up outside the bar waiting for the place to open.

   Before long, the unit broke down, and the bar's owner called Alcorn at
   home to have him remove the game. When he opened the unit to start a
   game, he quickly discovered the problem - the milk carton placed inside
   to catch the coins was overflowing with quarters to the point that the
   coin switch was jammed. Alcorn immediately called Bushnell in Chicago
   to tell him about the game's outstanding success, and Bushnell decided
   they should manufacture PONG themselves.

   Two weeks later, Magnavox learned of PONG, and notified Atari that they
   already had a patent on the concept. The two companies went to court.
   Magnavox was able to produce witnesses who had seen Bushnell playing
   the Odyssey's ping-pong game, and they had a guestbook from the event
   which Bushnell had signed. Magnavox and Atari eventually settled when
   Atari paid the television manufacturer $700,000 to license the patents.

   The home version of PONG was conceived in 1973 and designed by Al
   Alcorn, Bob Brown, and Harold Lee in 1975. Atari demonstrated the unit
   at the 1975 Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Because of the
   failure of the Odyssey (the unit was discontinued in 1974), retail
   outlets weren't interested by Atari's home console. These systems had
   on-screen digital scoring, something absent from other versions of
   PONG. However, soon after the show, Atari was contacted by Tom Quinn,
   sporting goods buyer for Sears. Quinn met with Nolan Bushnell, and
   asked how many units Atari could produce in time for the holiday
   shopping season. Bushnell said they could probably produce 75,000.
   Quinn told them Sears wanted double that many units, and they would pay
   to boost production to that level. In return, Sears would be the
   exclusive seller of Atari PONG.

   Christmas 1975 was the most popular season for PONG, with customers
   lined up outside Sears, waiting for shipments to arrive. That season's
   popularity caught the attention of Al Franken and Tom Davis during
   Saturday Night Live's first year; the comedy duo wrote and voiced
   several segments for SNL in which no actors were visible; all viewers
   saw was an active Pong game display, looking just like it would if they
   were playing the game themselves. As the game proceeded, Franken and
   Davis would talk to each other as friends, commenting only occasionally
   about the game itself (though the conversation of the players clearly
   had an occasional detrimental impact on their game skills).

   By 1977 the home version of PONG had become so popular that it was
   copied by other manufacturers until the market was overrun with cloned
   machines. The flooded market could not absorb more Pong systems -- real
   or cloned -- and the resulting "crash" in demand contributed to
   Fairchild's decision to exit the market.

   By the end of March 1983, Atari had sold between 8,000 to 10,000
   coin-operated PONG systems.

Versions

   Many versions of PONG were released, including Pong Doubles (a
   four-player PONG), Quadrapong (also four-player), Superpong, and Doctor
   PONG. Aside from Atari's arcade units, there were many PONG clones as
   well. In their rush to market, Atari did not wait to file for
   copyrights or patents on their unit. Despite Atari's success, only one
   in five Pong style games in arcades were actually made by them. To
   reduce this problem, Atari purposely mismarked the chips in genuine
   Pong units to confuse anyone who tried to clone one. As video game
   technology improved, home console versions of PONG appeared with colour
   graphics, and the later consoles often included additional games such
   as Breakout, which is a variation of PONG.

   A consequence of the popularity of PONG was that enthusiasts would play
   the game for hours at a time on their home consoles, leading to damage
   to the television screen being used as the display. Since the white
   lines forming the tennis court were shown constantly, they could become
   burned into the phosphor coating on the cathode ray tube of the
   television, causing irreparable damage to the screen. After a number of
   incidents where this occurred, the instruction books of video tennis
   games mentioned the risk and advised against extended play, or
   suggested that the brightness and contrast controls of the television
   be turned down in order to reduce the risk of damage. Another feature
   of constant play was the tendency of the control paddles to wear out
   and require replacement.

   The Pong consoles remained popular in the US until the late 1970s and
   in Europe until the early 1980s.

Ports

   Beyond the home versions, Pong has also been remade several times,
   including a version for PlayStation. It has been included in the recent
   " TV Games" collections, which are console-on-a-chip systems that
   feature "classic" games from the Atari 2600 era.

   PONG also served as a source of inspiration for Atari's game Breakout
   (1976) which was itself updated successfully ten years later by Taito
   under the name Arkanoid.

   PONG is available on Arcade Classics for the Sega Genesis.

   The original version (with Cabinet Art) and an updated version of PONG
   is available in the Atari Anthology Video Game for the PlayStation 2
   and the Xbox.

   The original PONG is challenging to faithfully emulate because it uses
   7400 chips and discrete logic rather than a CPU for game logic.

   Atari's 1991 arcade game Off The Wall features a competitive bonus
   round in two- and three-player games that plays exactly like a round of
   PONG.

Popular culture

     * The opening song to Frank Black's album Teenager of the Year is
       titled "What Ever Happened to Pong?" The lyrics tell a story of two
       brothers who scam older men by placing wagers on Pong competitions
       at bars.
     * Tennis star Andy Roddick starred in a commercial for American
       Express in which his opponent was Pong (his trainer advised him "he
       returns everything"). Roddick seems stumped as to how to defeat the
       bar, until he realizes the bar has no forward movement, and hits a
       drop shot over the net. The commercial Stop Pong also spawned a
       website, where the player, as Roddick, tries to beat Pong in a
       five-minute game.
     * In the film Wayne's World, the character Noah Vanderhoff tells
       Wayne he got into the video game business after watching some kids
       in an airport pump about $50 worth of quarters into PONG.
     * In an episode of King of the Hill, Peggy and Bobby are busy
       throughout the entire episode playing PONG. Without a pause button
       they fall asleep with it still bouncing back and forth.
     * Al Franken and collaborator Tom Davis did many sketches in the
       first season of Saturday Night Live which involved playing a home
       pong system and conversing in zany and odd conversations.
     * In an episode of That '70s Show, Kelso and Red try to make the game
       more challenging by tinkering with the console and making the
       paddles smaller.
     * In the hospital scene in Silent Movie, Dom Deluise and Marty
       Feldman tinker with the monitor to which the Studio Chief is hooked
       up, and cause its display to turn into a Pong game.
     * In the film Airport '77, children can be seen playing a cocktail
       cabinet version of PONG Doubles.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PONG"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
