PONG

:Pong is also a slang term for odour.

Versions

Many versions of PONG were released: Pong Doubles (a four-player PONG), Quadra Pong, Doctor Pong, etc. Aside from Atari's arcade units, there was a slew of PONG clones as well. In their rush to market, Atari did not wait to file for copyrights or patents on their unit. Despite Atari's success, only one in five PONG style games in arcades were actually made by Atari. To reduce this problem, they purposely mismarked the chips in the actual Pong units to confuse anyone who tried to clone one.

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The PONG systems remained popular in the US until the late 1970s and in Europe until the early 1980s.

Related Topics:
US - 1970s - Europe - 1980s

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Ports

Beyond the home versions, PONG has also been redone several times, including a version for PlayStation. Also, it has been included in the recent TV Games collections, which are console-on-a-chip systems that feature "classic" games from the Atari 2600 era.

Related Topics:
PlayStation - TV Games - Console-on-a-chip - Atari 2600

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PONG also served as a source of inspiration for Atari's game Breakout (1976) which was cloned successfully ten years later by Taito under the name Arkanoid.

Related Topics:
Atari - Breakout - 1976 - Taito - Arkanoid

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The original Pong is challenging to faithfully emulate because it uses 7400 chips rather than a CPU for game logic.

Related Topics:
Emulate - 7400

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There is a hidden Pong game in the fighting game Mortal Kombat II, which can be unlocked by playing a total of 250 battles (against human and computer opponents, combined).

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