An upright cabinet of Pong on display at the Neville Public Museum of Brown County
Developer(s)
Atari
Publisher(s)
NA/EU: Atari
JP: Atari Japan (Namco)[1]
Designer(s)
Allan Alcorn
Platform(s)
Arcade
Various dedicated consoles
Release
NA: 29 November 1972
JP: November 1973[1]
EU: 1973[2]
Genre(s)
Sports
Mode(s)
Single-player, multiplayer
Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released on 29 November 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.
Pong was the first commercially successful video game,[3] and it helped to establish the video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that closely mimicked its gameplay. Eventually, Atari's competitors released new types of video games that deviated from Pong's original format to varying degrees, and this, in turn, led Atari to encourage its staff to move beyond Pong and produce more innovative games themselves.
Atari released several sequels to Pong that built upon the original's gameplay by adding new features. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a home version of Pong exclusively through Sears retail stores. The home version was also a commercial success and led to numerous clones. The game was remade on numerous home and portable platforms following its release. Pong is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., due to its cultural impact.
^ abCite error: The named reference Akagi was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"After Pong". ACE. No. 6 (March 1988). 4 February 1988. pp. 29–32 (31).
^"Atari PONG". The Centre for Computing History. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released...
A ping pong show (Thai: โชว์ปิงปอง) is a form of stage entertainment that takes place in strip clubs. It is a type of sex show in which women use their...
Table tennis (also known as ping-pong or whiff-whaff) is a racket sport derived from tennis but distinguished by its playing surface being atop a stationary...
Beer pong, also known as Beirut, is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup...
Look up pongal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Pongal may refer to: Pongal (dish), a South Indian meal prepared from rice, milk and other ingredients...
species in the family Apocynaceae commonly known as the suicide tree or pong-pong. It bears a fruit known as othalanga whose seeds yield a potent poison...
sex ring. One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists...
Comet Ping Pong (often abbreviated as Comet) is a pizzeria, restaurant, and concert venue located on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C.'s Chevy Chase...
Pan Pong (also Panpon, Pan-Pon or Pang-Pong) is a hybrid of tennis and ping pong. The name comes from the sound when the ball is being hit from one side...
The Pong Dam, also known as the Beas Dam, is an earth-fill embankment dam on the Beas River in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India, just upstream of Talwara...
enzyme intermediate means that the mechanism of catalase is actually a ping–pong mechanism, a type of mechanism that is discussed in the Multi-substrate reactions...
Pong Dam Wild Life Sanctuary is a sanctuary in Himachal Pradesh, India. It covers 673 square kilometers. It was established in November 2002, under the...
carnivorous sponge in the family Cladorhizidae. It is commonly known as the "ping pong tree sponge" due to its distinctive tree-like shape with multiple branches...
television series adaptation by Scooter Films titled Mahjong Soul Pong (じゃんたま PONG☆, Jantama Pong☆) aired from April to June 2022 on the Super Animeism block...
The Pong Su incident began on 16 April 2003 when heroin was smuggled from the Pong Su, a North Korean cargo ship, onto an Australian beach. Australian...
Pong is still looking for Yasmine and Gohan jokingly tried to find Yasmine but he told him that Yasmine is already gone for a very long time. Pong said...
Fried shrimp cake (Khmer: នំកំប៉ុង, nom kapong; Vietnamese: bánh cống) is a specialty of Khmer Krom in Mỹ Xuyên district, Sóc Trăng province, Southern...
Robert Ponger (born 1950, Vienna) is an Austrian songwriter and record producer, most famous for his work with Austrian singer Falco. Ponger produced...
The Ping Pong Club (Japanese: 行け!稲中卓球部, Hepburn: Ike! Inachū Takkyū-bu, lit. Go! Inachū Middle School Ping-Pong Club) is a Japanese manga series written...
Global Information