LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Pong
built 186 days ago
The breakthrough that led Bushnell to invent the home version of Pong was the linking of mini-computers to TV terminals. In 1977, now under the ownership of Warner, Atari introduced its new Video Computer System (VCS) and nine compatible game cartridges. The company licensed the megahit arcade game Space Invaders for the VCS in 1980, and VCS sales soared to $100 million. In the early 1980s, riding high on the success of the VCS, Atari turned away from new product development, churning out software for dozens of new games and recycled versions of the VCS instead. It ... took part in an ultimately unsuccessful venture that allowed users to download games for the VCS over phone lines with a modem. When the video game market crashed in 1983-84, Atari was left with vast quantities of unsellable software and no new technology to fall back on. After the crash, consumers stayed away from home consoles, which were not reintroduced until Nintendo and Sega arrived on the scene in the late 1980s.
Source:
Released in 1972, Pong was the first commercially successful arcade game. Magnavox had an earlier game on its Ralph Baer-designed Odyssey system that was very much like Pong, and the company later sued Atari over this similarity. Atari settled out of court after it was revealed that co-founder Nolan Bushnell had seen the Magnavox version at a trade show.
Source:
Cloned versions of the Pong home console soon appeared, with the AY-3-8500 chip launched by General Instrument in 1976 offering a range of pong-style games to any manufacturer. By 1977, the market was saturated with cloned pong consoles and demand was in decline. Seeking a quick exit from the industry, many companies sold off their games at discount prices. The result was the first crash in the video game market, an event later echoed by the Video game crash of 1983. The public's interest in pong consoles had waned by the late 1970s, and the units had ceased production by the early 1980s. By this time, more sophisticated games such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man had become available, and the sound and graphics capabilities of pong consoles were seen as old-fashioned.
Source:
Sure, Pong may not seem like a lot today--two paddles batting a ball back and forth within a box--but it's actually more than 40 years of video game history in the palm of your hands. Willy Higinbotham created an abstract tennis game with an old oscilloscope and some vacuum tubes way back in 1958. Now, decades later, the concept that once required a university mainframe computer and probably enough electricity to smelt aluminum is now small enough to fit in your handheld.
Source:
The idea for a home console version of Pong was conceived in 1973 and a prototype was designed by Al Alcorn, Bob Brown and Harold Lee during 1975. The project was named Darlene after a female co-worker at Atari.[22] Pong had some important differences from the original Magnavox Odyssey, which had been discontinued in 1974. The Odyssey used discrete electronic components as a legacy of its 1960s roots, while Pong was based on an integrated circuit containing many components on a single chip. The chip in the home version of Pong was the most complex developed for a consumer product at the time. Pong boasted on-screen digital scoring, something the Odyssey lacked, but while the Odyssey offered a range of different games through plug-in circuit boards, the first Pong console played the table tennis game only. The original arcade Pong had black and white graphics, while the 1975 console version had color graphics.[23] The Odyssey lacked sounds and Pong made a distinctive bleeping noise through an internal loudspeaker each time the ball was hit.
Source:
The first commercially successful arcade video game, Pong was created by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and refined by his employee, Al Alcorn. The cabinet housing the game has two analog rotary controllers for maneuvering vertically moving paddles located on the left and right hand sides of the screen. Pong is a two-player competitive game, allowing one player to control the left paddle while the other controls the right. The object of this immeasurably influential game is to rebound the ball back and forth across the screen, and, as the simple instructions on the cabinet dictate, "Avoid missing ball for high score." The point at which the ball strikes the paddle determines the angle of the ricocheted ball, and the longer the ball stays in play, the faster it travels. Less complicated than Computer Space, a Nolan Bushnell creation from a year earlier, Pong was immensely popular, spawning countless spin-offs, rip-offs and home renditions.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Pong