14 Facts About Pong

Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972.

Pong was the first commercially successful video game, and it helped to establish the video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey.

Atari released several sequels to Pong that built upon the original's gameplay by adding new features.

Pong is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D C, due to its cultural impact.

Pong is a two-dimensional sports game that simulates table tennis.

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Pong went on to create his own designs based on his knowledge of transistor–transistor logic and Bushnell's game.

Pong divided the paddle into eight segments to change the ball's angle of return.

Pong made the ball accelerate the longer it remained in play; missing the ball reset the speed.

Bushnell had difficulty finding financial backing for Pong; banks viewed it as a variant of pinball, which at the time the general public associated with the Mafia.

In Japan, Pong was officially released in November 1973 by Atari Japan, which would later become part of Namco.

Bushnell felt that Pong was especially significant in its role as a social lubricant, since it was multiplayer-only and did not require each player to use more than one hand: "It was very common to have a girl with a quarter in hand pull a guy off a bar stool and say, 'I'd like to play Pong and there's nobody to play.

The sequels feature similar graphics, but include new gameplay elements; for example, Pong Doubles allows four players to compete in pairs, while Quadrapong— released by Kee Games as Elimination—has them compete against each other in a four-way field.

In 2012, Atari celebrated the 40th anniversary of Pong by releasing Pong World for iOS, which was developed by zGames.

In 2020, a new game titled Pong Quest was developed by Chequered Ink and released by Atari on Steam, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.