History

Pong was the first ever game developed by Atari, specifically by a software engineer named Allan Alcorn. Since it was his first brush with video games, the project was given to Alcorn as somewhat of a training exercise. According to Alcorn, this was a direct response to the Magnavox Odyssey’s Tennis game. The game was a great success and had many different versions on Atari consoles and others.

Rules

• The game is made up of 3 elements: Two bars (paddles), controlled by two players (or one player and a CPU), and a dot, representing a ball.
• The paddles can either move up or down. They are used to block the ball from going past them by making it bounce back preventing the other player from scoring a point.
• If the ball hits the top or bottom of the screen, it bounces. If it hits the left or right edges, it gives a point to the appropriate.
• The ball bounces back at different angles depending on the point it touches the paddle wether it is closer to the middle of or to the corners.

Goal

The goal of Pong is to make the ball go past the opponant paddle to score points. If one of the players achieves a certain number of points (in the version linked, 10) the game ends and that player wins.

Play It!