Files
website/content/software/pong.md
T
yann64andClaude Opus 5.5 de19014649 Content with the complete media download (15,344 files)
228 files were never archived; see docs/not-recovered.md in the extraction repo.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YDRjtmAiNpo5mK5N3d7QwZ
2026-10-13 16:47:19 +02:00

61 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown

---
title: Pong
tags:
- ball and paddle
- sport
- tennis
years:
- '1972'
params:
image: /media/museum/software/atari_pong_pub-cashbox-june-1973_s.jpg
specs:
- label: year of release
value: '1972'
- label: companies
value: Atari
- label: type
value: game
- label: media
value: arcade cabinet
- label: systems
value: Arcade
- label: number of players
value: 2 players (versus)
- label: staff
value: Nolan Bushnell
screenshots:
- title: ''
subtitle: ''
text: ''
image: /media/museum/software/atari_pong_arcade_s1.png
- title: Early advert (march 1973)
subtitle: ''
text: ''
image: /media/museum/software/pong_atari_pub-march-1973.jpg
- title: Advert (june 1973)
subtitle: ''
text: ''
image: /media/museum/software/atari_pong_pub-cashbox-june-1973.jpg
- title: arcade cabinet
subtitle: ''
text: ''
image: /media/museum/software/atari_pong_arcade_cab.jpg
machines:
- /museum/misc-arcade-video-games
company: /companies/misc
oc_id: 315
source:
url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230324052634/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/software_detail.asp?id=315
date: '2023-03-24'
---
Many things can be sayed about pong. It is certainly a game which changed the video game industry.
Contrary to what most people think, Pong is not the first videogame nor it is the first arcade video game (Computer Space, 1971). It is however the first successful arcade video game which really started the videogame industry.
Instructions were simple: "Avoid missing ball for high score" and that was one of the main reason for its success.
However, the concept of PONG was not really invented by Atari. As a matter of fact, Magnavox was putting their new [Odyssey home video game console](/museum/magnavox-odyssey/) in demonstration. On 24th May 1972, Nolan Bushnell (Atari founder) went to one of these demos at Burlingame, California where he signed the guest book and played the Tennis game, a simpler version of Pong.
The genius of Atari was to understand that this was the concept that they were looking for, and to develop a new "perfect" version with sound and increasing speed.