All you ever wanted to know about Pong, but were afraid to ask.

March 12, 2001 11:35 AM

All you ever wanted to know about Pong, but were afraid to ask. Okay, I had no idea - none - that Pong has such a long, involved history. I'd always seen it encapsulated as a two- or three- generation buildup to the Atari 2600 home machine. David Winter has exhaustively researched the life & times of Pong (Internationally) for those interested.
posted by kokogiak (14 comments total)

via slashdot?

mondays are slow news day on mefi?

dP
posted by darkpony at 1:28 PM on March 12, 2001

Wow! Very cool. I am so enamored of old electronics.
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:28 PM on March 12, 2001

That's much, much more than I ever wanted to know about Pong. :-)
posted by jpoulos at 1:37 PM on March 12, 2001

No darkpony, not via slashdot - via Yahoo - don't assume. If it was from another blog/community news site, I'd have given a reference. Yes, it is a slow news day, but I thought this was cool. You don't dig - great, move on.
posted by kokogiak at 2:11 PM on March 12, 2001

Pong rules!
posted by chesuta at 2:43 PM on March 12, 2001

Not everyone reads Slashdot (or Yahoo or [insert favorite odd-news site here]), so I appreciate the cross-posts.
posted by daveadams at 3:54 PM on March 12, 2001

Moving ahead, back to my childhood, I just came across this rare NES carts page.
I used to own several of those. I wonder where..
posted by sonofsamiam at 3:54 PM on March 12, 2001

I remember a pong game that I bought for my kids a long time ago. The game came with a TV screen overlay since it couldn't generate the court for the actual game.

That was the start of a generation of game players and computer folks and now the next generation five year old is playing Frogger and other stuff on his Playstation.
posted by frankminutillo at 4:08 PM on March 12, 2001

Don't you just love those classic computer games? I still have my old Game-and-Watch "Octopus" and "Manhole", though they don't work anymore. And I still play "Executive Suite", "Rogue", and "Sleuth" once in a while, just for kicks.

(Those of you who're interested, I found a DOS Pong somewhere and put it up on my website for download. Here.)
posted by brownpau at 11:19 PM on March 12, 2001

Argh. That's what I get for trying to shamelessly plug myself. Mispelled the damn link.
posted by brownpau at 11:25 PM on March 12, 2001

Hey man... now the link works, but the Pong link within that page won't work. I managed to snag Rogue, though...
posted by TheShovel at 3:04 PM on March 13, 2001

Don't worry brownpau it's not looked on as that bad within a thread. It's rather strange that this came up soon after I created the Temple of pong. Strange world.
posted by john at 3:33 PM on March 13, 2001

These classic games will return. Mark my words. And if they don't we'll make `em return.

The Pong link doesn't work? I'll check that...
posted by brownpau at 7:26 PM on March 13, 2001

D'oh I messed up the CSS link. I'm a goof.
posted by john at 3:39 PM on March 14, 2001