Pong is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades. It was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were so surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work that they decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console; in response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
Pong was the first commercially successful video game, helping to establish the video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that closely mimicked its gameplay. Eventually, Atari's competitors released new types of video games that deviated from Pongs original format to varying degrees; this, in turn, led Atari to encourage its staff to move beyond Pong and produce more innovative games themselves.
Atari released several sequels to Pong that built upon the original's gameplay by introducing new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a home version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. The home version was also a commercial success and led to numerous clones. The game was later remade on numerous home and portable platforms. Pong is regarded as one of the most influential and greatest video games of all time, and is considered one of the most culturally significant video games, being part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C..
Gameplay
Pong is a two-dimensional sports game that simulates table tennis. The player controls an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left or right side of the screen. They can compete against another player controlling a second paddle on the opposing side. Players use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth. The goal is for each player to reach eleven points before the opponent; points are earned when one fails to return the ball to the other.
Development and history
Pong was the first game developed by Atari. In 1971, Bushnell and Dabney founded Syzygy Engineering to develop the concept of a standalone computer system with a monitor and attaching a coin slot to it to play games on. Drawing inspiration from Spacewar!, the duo created Computer Space. As the game did not fare well commercially, Bushnell decided to form a company to produce more games by licensing ideas to other companies. The first contract was with Bally Manufacturing Corporation for a pinball game and a video game that Bushnell told Bally would have a hockey theme. Soon after the founding, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn because of his experience with electrical engineering and computer science; Bushnell and Dabney also had previously worked with him at Ampex. Prior to working at Atari, Alcorn had no experience with video games.
To acclimate Alcorn to creating games, Bushnell gave him a project secretly meant to be a warm-up exercise. Bushnell told Alcorn that he had a contract with General Electric for a product, and asked Alcorn to create a simple game with one moving spot, two paddles, and digits for score keeping. In 2011, Bushnell stated that the game was inspired by previous versions of electronic tennis he had played before; Bushnell played a version on a PDP-1 computer in 1964 while attending college. However, Alcorn has claimed it was in direct response to Bushnell's viewing of the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis game. In May 1972, Bushnell had visited the Magnavox Profit Caravan in Burlingame, California where he played the Magnavox Odyssey demonstration, specifically the table tennis game. Though he thought the game lacked quality, seeing it prompted Bushnell to assign the project to Alcorn.
Alcorn first examined Bushnell's schematics for Computer Space, but found them to be illegible. He went on to create his own designs based on his knowledge of transistor–transistor logic (TTL) and Bushnell's game. Feeling the basic game was too boring, Alcorn added features to give the game more appeal. He divided the paddle into eight segments to change the ball's angle of return. For example, the center segments return the ball at a 90° angle in relation to the paddle, while the outer segments return the ball at smaller angles. He also made the ball accelerate the longer it remained in play; missing the ball reset the speed. Another feature was that the in-game paddles were unable to reach the top of the screen. This was caused by a simple circuit that had an inherent defect. Instead of dedicating time to fixing the defect, Alcorn decided it gave the game more difficulty and helped limit the time the game could be played; he imagined two skilled players being able to play forever otherwise.
Three months into development, Bushnell told Alcorn he wanted the game to feature realistic sound effects and a roaring crowd. Dabney wanted the game to "boo" and "hiss" when a player lost a round. Alcorn had limited space available for the necessary electronics and was unaware of how to create such sounds with digital circuits. After inspecting the sync generator, he discovered that it could generate different tones and used those for the game's sound effects. To construct the prototype, Alcorn purchased a $75 Hitachi black-and-white television set from a local store, placed it into a wooden cabinet, and soldered the wires into boards to create the necessary circuitry. The prototype impressed Bushnell and Dabney so much that they felt it could be a profitable product and decided to test its marketability.
In August 1972, Bushnell and Alcorn installed the Pong prototype at a local bar, Andy Capp's Tavern. They selected the bar because of their good working relationship with the bar's owner and manager, Bill Gaddis; Atari supplied pinball machines to Gaddis. Bushnell and Alcorn placed the prototype on one of the tables near the other entertainment machines: a jukebox, pinball machines, and Computer Space. The game was well received the first night and its popularity continued to grow over the next one and a half weeks. Bushnell then went on a business trip to Chicago to demonstrate Pong to executives at Bally and Midway Manufacturing; he intended to use Pong to fulfill his contract with Bally. A few days later, the prototype began exhibiting technical issues and Gaddis contacted Alcorn to fix it. Upon inspecting the machine, Alcorn discovered that the problem was due to the coin mechanism overflowing with quarters.
After hearing about the game's success, Bushnell decided there would be more profit for Atari to manufacture the game rather than license it. Bushnell had difficulty finding financial backing for Pong; banks viewed it as a variant of pinball, which at the time the general public associated with the Mafia. Atari eventually obtained a line of credit from Wells Fargo that it used to expand its facilities to house an assembly line. The company announced Pong on November 29, 1972. Management sought assembly workers at the local unemployment office, but was unable to keep up with demand. The first arcade cabinets produced were assembled very slowly, about ten machines a day, many of which failed quality testing. Atari eventually streamlined the process and began producing the game in greater quantities. By 1973, they began shipping Pong to other countries with the aid of foreign partners.
In Japan, Pong was officially released in November 1973 by Atari Japan, which would later be sold to Namco. However, Pong had been beaten to the market by two Japanese Pong clones released in July 1973: Sega's Pong Tron and Taito's Elepong.
Home version
After the success of Pong, Bushnell asked his employees to create new products. A new electronic technology, the large-scale integration (LSI) chip, had recently become available, which Bushnell believed would "allow pioneering in new" game concepts. Atari began working on the reduction of Pong from a large arcade printed circuit board (PCB) down to a small LSI chip for use in a home system. The initial development cost for a game on a single LSI chip was expensive, costing around , but once the chip was developed, it became significantly cheaper to mass-produce the game as well as more difficult to reverse-engineer.
In 1974, Atari engineer Harold Lee proposed a home version of Pong that would connect to a television: Home Pong. The system began development under the codename Darlene, named after an employee at Atari. Alcorn worked with Lee to develop the designs and prototype and based them on the same digital technology used in their arcade games. The two worked in shifts to save time and money; Lee worked on the design's logic during the day, while Alcorn debugged the designs in the evenings. After the designs were approved, fellow Atari engineer Bob Brown assisted Alcorn and Lee in building a prototype. The prototype consisted of a device attached to a wooden pedestal containing over a hundred wires, which would eventually be replaced with a single chip designed by Alcorn and Lee; the chip had yet to be tested and built before the prototype was constructed. The chip was finished in the latter half of 1974, and was, at the time, the highest-performing chip used in a consumer product.
Bushnell and Gene Lipkin, Atari's vice-president of sales, approached toy and electronic retailers to sell Home Pong, but were rejected. Retailers felt the product was too expensive and would not interest consumers. Bushnell contacted Sears after coming across a Magnavox Odyssey advertisement in the sporting goods section of its catalog. Atari staff (including Bushnell and Lipkin) discussed the game with a representative, Tom Quinn, who expressed enthusiasm and offered the company an exclusive deal. Believing they could find more favorable terms elsewhere, Atari's executives declined and continued to pursue toy retailers. In January 1975, Atari staff set up a Home Pong booth at the American Toy Fair (a trade fair) in New York City, but was unsuccessful in soliciting orders due to high price of the unit.
While at the show, they met Quinn again, and, a few days later, set up a meeting with him to obtain a sales order. In order to gain approval from the Sporting Goods department, Quinn suggested Atari demonstrate the game to executives in Chicago. Alcorn and Lipkin traveled to the Sears Tower and, despite a technical complication in connection with an antenna on top of the building which broadcast on the same channel as the game, obtained approval. Bushnell told Quinn he could produce 75,000 units in time for the Christmas season; however, Quinn requested double the amount. Though Bushnell knew Atari lacked the capacity to manufacture 150,000 units, he agreed. Atari acquired a new factory through funding obtained by venture capitalist Don Valentine. Supervised by Jimm Tubb, the factory fulfilled the Sears order. The first units manufactured, branded with Sears' "Tele-Games" name, started to sell around the end of October to mid-November 1975 with a 1-year warranty for $98.95 and an additional $7.95 for the optional AC adapter. Atari later released a version under its own brand in 1976.
Lawsuit from Magnavox