How Pong Developed into One of the Best Full Sized Arcades

Coming out in 1972, nobody can deny the amount of influence that something like Pong had on gaming and the industry. Considered to be the very first successful arcade game, the butterfly effect that Pong has had on gaming and full sized arcades is appreciated even today, with more complex games made in its wake. To truly appreciate just what it brought, here are some interesting facts about Pong that may surprise you.

Humble Origins

Pong was the first game to be developed by company Atari inc. It was meant to be used to acclimate new developer Allan Alcorn. He was an electrical engineer who worked beside actual developer Nolan Bushnell, and the development of Pong was used to be a practice. With a contract from General Electric, all they had to do was create a game with two paddles and a method of keeping score. As you may now know, it turned into something that exceeded everyone’s expectations. 

The Innovation

Despite being a relative rookie to the job, Allcorn felt that the game design was far too simplistic and tedious for anyone to get excited about and needed a little extra something to rise above the rest. He did this by adding eight segments onto the paddles on both sides of the screen so that when the moving ball hit them, it would change its trajectory based on where it struck the paddle. On top of making sure that there would be a time limit to give a sense of urgency in the game, Allcorn also made it so that the paddles couldn’t reach the top of the screen. This feature adds an extra layer of difficulty to make the overall product more challenging and exciting.

Finishing Touches

With his fellow developers and superiors wanting the game to exhibit sound effects to immerse the players into the game, Allcorn knew he needed a way to test run the game itself to see if he could accomplish this. To succeed in this endeavor, he acquired a Hitachi black and white television, put it in a wooden cabinet, and the game played flawlessly for what he had intended. His superiors and Bushnell were highly impressed and would eventually seek to test it out at a bar called Andy Capp’s Tavern to test out just how popular it could be. 

The Feedback

The Pong was very much well-received in the bar. This game was so popular amongst arcade games that it malfunctioned from too many quarters put in, displaying just how much of a hit it had become. Deciding to manufacture the game itself for Atari instead of licensing, Bushnell got some credit from Wells Fargo to get a warehouse for which an assembly line for Pong could be made. The production of it was slow going initially, but by the time 1973 rolled around, the game started selling like hotcakes, showing just how much of a marvel it was for its time. 

Allan After Pong

With Allan finishing up work on Pong and leaving Atari back in 1981, he accomplished other notable feats that we can still feel today. One such action would be his assistance in creating a video game cartridge system while working with Etak and becoming one of the big tech heads in Apple together with Steve Jobs and Wozniak. 

Conclusion

As you can see, Pong was a fantastic product that became something it wasn’t intended to become by its licensors but was improved upon because of a specific engineer who wanted to go the extra mile to make the game more of what it could be. Coupled with a developer who saw the potential moneymaker that this game could turn into, it would go down in history as a game that truly revolutionized the industry for its time when it came to full sized arcades.

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