Pong
1972 · Sports · Arcade
Overview
Pong is the game that launched the commercial video game industry, released by Atari in 1972 as the first commercially successful arcade game. Designed by engineer Allan Alcorn as a training exercise, the game simulates a table tennis match with two paddle-controlled lines and a bouncing ball. Atari placed a prototype machine at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, and within weeks it had broken down from being played too much — jammed with quarters. Pong was eventually released as a home console version in 1975, bringing video games into living rooms for the first time at mass scale.
Deep Dive
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell assigned Pong to new hire Allan Alcorn as a practice project inspired by the Magnavox Odyssey's table tennis game. Alcorn added realistic physics — making the ball angle change based on which part of the paddle it hit — that weren't in his specification. The original arcade cabinet used simple TTL logic chips rather than a programmable computer. After the Andy Capp's Tavern success, Bushnell mass-produced the cabinet and Atari grew from a two-person startup to a multi-million dollar company within a year. Dozens of clones appeared almost immediately, creating the first video game market. The home version sold 150,000 units in its first year through Sears and became the best-selling product in the Sears catalog for the 1975 holiday season.
