For The Love Of... Pong

Pong. Pong, Pong, Pong. Fun to say and fun to play, Pong is the quintessential videogame. Everyone's heard of it, with anyone who says they haven't played it being a liar. Its simple premise, an endless game of table tennis between two white lines, is timeless and as enjoyable to play today as it ever was. We will forever recognise its signature beeps and boops, reminding them of tense matches played whenever they hear them.

Pivotal in the creation of the entire videogame industry, it's impossible to overstate the importance of Pong's conception. Created as a training exercise by Allan Alcorn for Atari, it was soon released in arcades where it became an instant success. Thousands of arcade and table cabinets were distributed around the world, regularly pulling in income four times greater than that of similar machines. Home versions were commissioned and created soon afterwards, becoming one of the first home videogame consoles, laying the foundations for everything that came after and birthing a whole new medium. Atari received huge profits as a result of the game's popularity, allowing the company to become the first major player in the industry.

Nowadays it can be found in an instant online from hundreds of different sources, and whilst it's one of the most successful games to date, and I still enjoy the occasional blast of it now and again, its mass success and infinite playabilty is not the reason I love Pong. For me, there are a number of personal reasons why the title will always have a place in my heart.

Back in the nineties, my brother and I were glued to the family PC the day it arrived in the house, investing countless hours in a massive variety of games. We had a knack for sourcing a whole range of obscure titles from a wide range of places, usually demo discs and downloads via our state-of-the-art 56k dial-up internet connection. One of these included a Nik Naks Pong clone, the titular brand of crisps replacing the paddles. It was essentially the same game but with silly crunching noises instead of beeps, but was still a good laugh nonetheless. We played a lot of obscure titles, but for some reason or another this one sticks in my mind.

Another reason I love Pong is that it reminds me of happier times from my school years. A bunch of guys in my year and I would go to our local youth centre where they'd be a whole range of activities to take part in, with football usually being the most popular. There were occasions when one of the leaders would bring in a Pong machine and on those nights the football was abandoned as we crowded around the old TV that hosted the console. Tournaments would be held, with matchups rising in excitement and tension rising as games neared their climax, with winners garnering cheers from the crowd and losers cursing themselves for conceding that one stray ball. The people I went to the club with have since shown their true colours and I no longer associate with them, but memories of those nights twisting and turning those control paddles stay with me.

But it's not the social aspect or reminiscence of my youth that cement my love for the game. In fact, it's a more selfish reason altogether.

As some of you may know, Ubisoft used to operate a UK branch of the Frag Dolls, their girl gamer clan used to promote females in gaming as well as the company's products. I used to frequent the forums of the UK group where I made a lot of gaming pals that I still play with to this day. It's since become defunct, shutting down suddenly and unexpectedly after a spate of mysterious departures of the staff for reasons unknown.

Anyway, they used to hold frequent competitions for the community, with one requiring users to draw an emotional moment from a videogame in Microsoft Paint. I viewed the entries, ranging from Aeris' death in Final Fantasy VII to the first appearance of the hideous monsters in Silent Hill, submissions that obviously had a lot of time spent on them. Seeing the calibre of the entries, I decided to take the piss and submit an entry that took less than a minute to create. I jumped into Paint, literally drew a dot and two lines (which weren't even straight) and uploaded it to the forum. A while later, I returned to see how many people I had managed to raise a laugh from...

I ended up winning a runner-up prize, receiving three games of varying quality, a good reward for very little effort, and that's why I love Pong. You should try winning a competition with a lacklustre effort sometime. It's good fun.