DESCRIPTION

The first commercially successful arcade video game, Pong was created by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and refined by his employee, Al Alcorn. The cabinet housing the game has two analog rotary controllers for maneuvering vertically moving paddles located on the left and right hand sides of the screen. Pong is a two-player competitive game, allowing one player to control the left paddle while the other controls the right. The object of this immeasurably influential game is to rebound the ball back and forth across the screen, and, as the simple instructions on the cabinet dictate, "Avoid missing ball for high score." The point at which the ball strikes the paddle determines the angle of the ricocheted ball, and the longer the ball stays in play, the faster it travels. Less complicated than Computer Space, a Nolan Bushnell creation from a year earlier, Pong was immensely popular, spawning countless spin-offs, rip-offs and home renditions. The game remains a pure test of one's skill and is one of the best two-player simultaneous games of all time. ~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide