Just to be clear, I'm not talking about Pong for the Atari 2600 or Pong for the Odyssey so don't get your shit tied up in a fucking knot okay! I'm talking about that iconic Atari arcade Pong.
Before:
Before Pong even existed or even before Atari was a company, there was an analog computer called the NIMROD *giggle, giggle* that used an oscilloscope as a display to play games such as Tennis For Two.
"Imagine what people thought
of this when they first saw it."
Also on this computer, there was a game called Spacewar! that was featured on later computers. This game inspired a young Nolan Bushnell to form the company Syzygy with Ted Dabney to produce the Spacewar! clone Computer Space.
"Wow! Ain't she something!"
Unfortunately the game was a commercial failure even though it made 3 million dollars. What the Fuck! It was 1971, how was 3 million dollars a commercial failure back then! Anyway, the name of the company, Syzygy, was later changed to Atari after finding out the company name was already being used by a Mendocino hippie commune's candle company. I don't even know what the fuck that is, but it sure doesn't sound important. After finally getting the company's first office in Sunnyvale, California, Nolan Bushnell attended a demonstration for the Magnavox Oddysey and he was impressed by the tennis game made for the system. He later got the idea to produce a coin-op version of the game and Pong was born!
"Ta da!"
After:
Now, at this point you probably are thinking to yourself, "Wow! Nolan Bushnell has no creativity." And for that, I shit on your front lawn because you have forgotten what happened after Pong. The game was a huge success putting the company on the map. Atari later released other coin-op versions of the game a home pong console and the Atari 2600. Other companies thought the pong console was a great idea so many companies produced their own versions, including Nintendo. This can be better explained by the Angry Video Game Nerd at this link, http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/62615.
The Atari 2600 was also a huge success selling 30 million units. Unfortunately, many companies produced games for the system without Atari's approval and games approved for the console were usually as good as eating shit. The two most imfamous games for the system were E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Pac-Man.
"It's just so awful!"
Those games are frequently blamed for the video game crash of the early 80's. Just to demonstrate how bad this was for Atari, the company went from making 2 billion dollars in 1982 to being sold off in three sections in 1984 because nobody wanted to buy the whole company.
"This was so bad, I couldn't find a picture of Atari's revenue at the time. It must all be buried somewhere in the desert."
Even though Atari failed as a company Pong still has popularity in the video game industry today. The most common version of Pong today would be the tennis game in Wii Sports for the Wii.
"Different point system, but basically the same game."
There are many other games that are like Pong like Mario Tennis for the Virtual Boy, Mario Tennis 64 for the Nintendo 64, and just Tennis for the NES, but the Wii Sports versions is the best version. Also, in Tennis for the NES, Mario's in that game too as the referee.
"Told ya so!"
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