November 29, 2012 AT 9:16 am
Serve and Return: Pong Turns 40!
On November 29th, 1972, Atari — only 5 months old itself — first introduced Pong to the world.
They’ve been building to this anniversary for some time. Back in February, they announced the Pong Indie Developer Challenge, a contest where developers could submit their own re-inventions of the classic title. Though not without controversey, the contest did received a number of submissions, eventually announcing the winners in August.
More recently, Atari celebrated the 40th anniversary by creating a huge Pong game on the side of a building in Kansas City (video above).
Happy birthday, Pong!
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It was an exciting day when the first Pong came to “The Pizza Hut” (a little mom & pop joint, not the chain of the same name) on Main St, in Farmingdale, NY.
At the time, people were ambivalent about it- sure it was neat, but most of the kids I hung with still liked the mechanical pinball machines better, which took a lot more skill to operate the flippers than Pong’s paddle-pots, at least until you got good enough for the ball speed to increase.
It took a few more years for video games to catch on with most folks. For this old-timer, the venerable vector-graphics “Asteroids” was the high-water mark!
When Pong came out, I was in the 6th grade, and you could buy a slice for 15 cents!
Time flies like an arrow!
(and fruit flies like a bananna)