Machine Memories: Pong

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Machine Memories: Pong

On 02/01/2023 at 10:55 AM by KnightDriver

Remember Radio Shack? It was an electronics store that is now mostly defunct, but they were everywhere back in the 70s when my father bought Pong for us kids, Christmas, 1976.

pong

This console had some really weird nunchuck-like controllers. You could play Hockey, Tennis or Handball, basically all pong with variations. I played with my sister. I was 9 and she 8. This was the very first TV game I played.

Wacky time: Check this out, Physical Pong?

Comments

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/01/2023 at 01:19 PM

PONG

Honestly, wouldn't be too hard to recreate a simple version at home ... hmmm

KnightDriver

02/01/2023 at 02:45 PM

Could convert any air hockey table to Pong. Oh wait, air hockey is exactly pong!

Cary Woodham

02/01/2023 at 02:00 PM

My first memory of a Pong home console was when my dad built our first TV from ordering parts in a Heathkit catalog. He put in a pong clone console in the back. You would just turn the station to channel 3 and pull out the paddles from behind the TV and you could play. I was so young, though, that I didn't realize that was a video game. I just thought it was something you could do on your TV when nothing else was on.

I've played that new physical Pong arcade game at D&B's. I wonder how they get it to work? Magnets or something. It's pretty neat.

KnightDriver

02/01/2023 at 02:46 PM

That's really cool to build Pong right into the TV. Sounds like a good science project.

It's at Dave & Busters? Cool. I'll have to go there and see it in person.

SanAndreas

02/01/2023 at 05:26 PM

We had a knockoff Pong console. We may still have one somewhere.

Fun fact: Nintendo's Pong clone consoles were the best-selling video game systems of the 1970s. So Nintendo actually won the first generation of game systems. Even before the NES they were kickin' tail.