The Njc Retro Game Review For Pong

Where it all began or did it ......?

Not knowing which game to start with for reviewing I thought I'd start at the beginning with a retro review of the game wrongly recognized as the first video game Pong.

Brief History Of Pong (the full history is much bigger)
The history of Pong can be traced back to 1958 when Willy Higinbotham created a playable version of tennis using an oscilliscope. The oscilliscope (the X-BOX of it's day - a large, bulky machine with few games for it) was also the hardware platform that played the first nationally recognized video game called Spacewar although to run this game an expansion pack was required in the form of a room filling mainframe (it never caught on).

While Spacewar was renamed to Computer Space and turned into an arcade machine (without the need for a room filling mainframe)it was not a success when released to the public. It was found that the public (who never seen a games arcade before, let alone an arcade game) found the game too complicated. The public needed something a bit simpler and what could be simpler then hitting a ball with a bat or as we know it Pong.

So while Pong was not the first videogame, it was the first arcade game that people knew how to play (early instructions simply stated that a player needed to hit the ball with bat to maximize score!) and the first mainstream videogame that was available to almost everyone, so there.

Gameplay
It's just like tennis, you hit the ball with your bat your opponent does the same and this goes on till someone misses the ball and then you play the next point or someone gets to 15 points at which point we have a winner, it's simple but it is addictive.

Graphics
Not much to say really, there's two bats (disguised as vertical lines) and a ball (oddly square shaped) and in later versions on screen scoring and it's all in glorious monochrome, although later versions and the many varients will use colour (blasphemy).

Sound
A beep (or pong sound) when the ball hits the bat, what more do you want?

Lifespan
When it was the only video game there was it's lifespan was huge, now it's probably just coffee/tea break material.

Ratings (out of 5)
Gameplay 5
Graphics 5
Sound 5
Lifespan 5

The Blogger says...
Alright so the ratings are a bit off as the game hasn't aged well and we are all now used to graphic intensive games but if it wasn't for Pong achieving mainstream success, computer/video games may never have taken off and we wouldn't have the graphic intensive games and consoles we do today, and besides I'm pretty sure everybody at one point or another has played a variant of Pong, if not shame on you.

Overall Score 5

Highly recommended. A true video game classic.

More Information about Pong
http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/pong