Pong is a 1972 sports video game made and sold by Atari, Inc. for arcade machines. Allan Alcorn created it as a practice project given to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were impressed by the quality of Alcorn’s work and decided to make the game. Bushnell got the idea for the game from an electronic ping-pong game on the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. Because of this, Magnavox later sued Atari for using the game’s design without permission.
Pong became the first video game that was very successful in selling, helping to start the video game industry along with the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after it was released, many companies made games that copied its style. Later, Atari’s competitors created new types of video games that were different from Pong. This encouraged Atari to ask its workers to create more creative games instead of only making copies of Pong.
Atari made several follow-up versions of Pong that added new features to the original game. During the 1975 Christmas season, Atari released a home version of Pong only through Sears stores. This home version was also successful and led to many similar games. The game was later released on many other home and portable systems. Pong is considered one of the most important and influential video games ever made. It is also part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Gameplay
Pong is a flat sports game that copies the game of table tennis. A player moves a paddle up and down on the left or right side of the screen. Another player controls a second paddle on the opposite side. The players use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth. The goal is to be the first to score eleven points. A player gets a point if the other player doesn't hit the ball back.
Development and history
Pong was the first game made by Atari. In 1971, Bushnell and Dabney started a company called Syzygy Engineering to create a standalone computer system with a monitor and a coin slot for playing games. Inspired by the game Spacewar!, they made a game called Computer Space. However, Computer Space was not successful in selling many copies. Because of this, Bushnell decided to form a company to make more games by getting ideas from other companies. His first deal was with Bally Manufacturing Corporation to create a pinball game and a video game with a hockey theme. Soon after starting the company, Bushnell hired Allan Alcorn because of his experience with electrical engineering and computer science. Alcorn had worked with Bushnell and Dabney before at Ampex, but had no experience with video games before joining Atari.
To help Alcorn learn how to make games, Bushnell gave him a secret project. He told Alcorn he had a contract with General Electric and asked him to create a simple game with one moving spot, two paddles, and a way to keep score. In 2011, Bushnell said the game was inspired by a version of electronic tennis he had played on a PDP-1 computer in 1964. However, Alcorn said he was influenced by seeing the Magnavox Odyssey’s Tennis game. In May 1972, Bushnell visited the Magnavox Profit Caravan in California and played the Odyssey’s table tennis game. Though he thought the game was not very good, it inspired him to assign the project to Alcorn.
Alcorn first looked at the schematics for Computer Space but found them hard to read. He then created his own designs using his knowledge of transistor–transistor logic (TTL) and the ideas from Bushnell’s game. He added features to make the game more interesting. For example, he divided the paddle into eight parts so the ball would return at different angles. The center parts sent the ball back at a 90° angle, while the outer parts sent it back at smaller angles. He also made the ball speed up the longer it stayed in play, and reset the speed if the ball was missed. Another feature was that the paddles could not reach the top of the screen because of a circuit flaw. Instead of fixing the flaw, Alcorn thought it made the game harder and limited how long players could play.
Three months into development, Bushnell asked Alcorn to add realistic sound effects and crowd noises. Dabney wanted the game to make sounds like “boo” and “hiss” when a player lost. Alcorn had limited space for electronics and did not know how to make sounds with digital circuits. After checking the sync generator, he found it could make different tones and used those for the game’s sounds. To build the prototype, Alcorn bought a $75 Hitachi black-and-white television, placed it in a 4-foot wooden cabinet, and soldered wires to create the circuitry. The prototype impressed Bushnell and Dabney, who thought it could be a profitable product and decided to test its popularity.
In August 1972, Bushnell and Alcorn installed the Pong prototype at a local bar called Andy Capp’s Tavern. They chose the bar because they had a good relationship with the owner, Bill Gaddis, who also used Atari’s pinball machines. They placed the prototype near other games like a jukebox, pinball machines, and Computer Space. The game was popular the first night and stayed popular for about one and a half weeks. Bushnell then traveled to Chicago to show Pong to executives at Bally and Midway Manufacturing. A few days later, the prototype had technical issues, and Gaddis asked Alcorn to fix it. Alcorn found the problem was caused by the coin mechanism overflowing with quarters.
After hearing about Pong’s success, Bushnell decided it would be more profitable for Atari to make the game themselves rather than license it. He had trouble finding money for Pong because banks saw it as similar to pinball, which was associated with the Mafia. Atari eventually got a loan from Wells Fargo to expand its facilities and build an assembly line. The company announced Pong on November 29, 1972. They hired workers from the local unemployment office but could not keep up with demand. The first arcade cabinets were made slowly, about ten a day, and many failed quality checks. Atari improved the process and began making more units. By 1973, they started shipping Pong to other countries with help from foreign partners.
In Japan, Pong was officially released in November 1973 by Atari Japan, which later became part of Namco. However, two Japanese versions of Pong were released earlier in July 1973: Sega’s Pong Tron and Taito’s Elepong.
After Pong’s success, Bushnell asked his employees to create new products. A new technology called the large-scale integration (LSI) chip became available, which Bushnell believed could help make new game ideas. Atari worked on shrinking Pong’s large arcade circuit board into a small LSI chip for a home system. The cost to develop a game on a single LSI chip was high, about $50,000 (equivalent to $397,000 in 2025), but once made, it was cheaper to mass-produce and harder to copy.
In 1974, Atari engineer Harold Lee proposed a home version of Pong that connected to a television, called Home Pong. The project was named Darlene after an Atari employee. Alcorn and Lee used the same technology from arcade games to design and build a prototype. They worked in shifts to save time and money: Lee designed the logic during the day, and Alcorn fixed problems in the evenings. After approval, another Atari engineer, Bob Brown, helped build the prototype. The prototype used a device with over 100 wires attached to a wooden pedestal, which would later be replaced by a single chip designed by Alcorn and Lee. The chip was completed in late 1974 and was the most powerful chip used in a consumer product at the time.
Bushnell and Gene Lipkin, Atari’s vice-president of sales, tried to sell Home Pong to toy and electronics stores but were refused. Retailers thought the product was too expensive. Bushnell saw an advertisement for the Magnavox Odyssey in a Sears catalog and contacted Sears. A Sears representative, Tom Quinn, was excited and offered an exclusive deal. Atari’s executives thought they could get better terms elsewhere and continued trying to sell to toy retailers. In January 1975, Atari set up a Home Pong booth.
Impact and legacy
The Pong arcade games made by Atari were very successful. The early version of the game was well liked by people who visited Andy Capp's Tavern; many came to the bar just to play Pong. After it was released, Pong earned four times more money than other coin-operated machines. Bushnell said the game made about $35 to $40 each day (which meant 140 to 160 plays daily per machine at 25 cents per play), a record he had never seen before in the coin-operated entertainment industry. The game's success led to more orders for Atari, giving the company a steady income. Atari sold the machines for three times what it cost to make them. By 1973, the company had filled 2,500 orders, and by the end of 1974, it sold more than 8,000 units. The arcade cabinets are now collector items, with cocktail cabinets being the rarest. After Pong was tested successfully at Andy Capp's Tavern, other companies visited the bar to see it. Similar games appeared on the market three months later, made by companies like Ramtek and Nutting Associates. Atari could not stop competitors because it had not filed patents for the technology used in the game. When Atari did file for patents, delays happened. As a result, the market had many "Pong clones." Steven Kent estimated that Atari made less than one-third of all the machines. Bushnell called the competitors "Jackals" because he believed they had unfair advantages. His solution was to create more innovative games and ideas.
Home Pong was very popular after its limited release in 1975 through Sears; about 150,000 units were sold that holiday season. The game became Sears' most successful product, earning Atari a Sears Quality Excellence Award. Atari sold an additional 50,000 units of its own version. Like the arcade version, many companies released copies of Pong to take advantage of its success, and some continued making new consoles and video games. Magnavox updated their Odyssey system with simpler hardware and new features. Coleco entered the video game market with their Telstar console, which had three versions of Pong and later models. The Pong consoles and their copies are now rare in different ways; Atari's versions are common, while APF Electronics' TV Fun consoles are moderately rare. Prices for collectors vary based on rarity; Sears Tele-Games versions are often cheaper than those with the Atari brand.
Many sources say Pong started the video game industry as a profitable business. David Ellis considers Pong the foundation of the industry's success, calling the arcade version "one of the most historically significant" games. Steven Kent says Pong and Atari's later games caused the "arcade phenomenon" and that the home version's release marked the beginning of home video game consoles. Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton of Gamasutra called Pong's release the start of a new form of entertainment, noting its simple and easy-to-learn gameplay. In 1995, Flux magazine ranked Pong 56th on their "Top 100 Video Games." In 1996, Next Generation named it one of the "Top 100 Games of All Time," saying staff members played Pong for hours when the Genesis version was released despite having access to advanced 32-bit software. In 1999, Next Generation listed Pong as number 34 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time," saying its simplicity made it a great two-player challenge. Entertainment Weekly named Pong one of the top ten games for the Atari 2600 in 2013. Many companies that made their own versions of Pong later became well-known in the industry. Nintendo entered the video game market with copies of Home Pong. The money earned from these systems—over a million units sold combined—helped the company survive a tough financial period and inspired it to continue making video games. In 2015, The Strong National Museum of Play added Pong to its World Video Game Hall of Fame.
Bushnell believed Pong was important because it brought people together. Since it was a multiplayer-only game and did not require more than one hand per player, it created social connections. He said it was common for someone to pull a person off a bar stool to play Pong, leading to conversations, laughter, and even friendships. Some people even said they met their spouses while playing Pong.
Atari made Pong available on many platforms. In 1977, Pong and its variations were included in Video Olympics, one of the first games for the Atari 2600. Pong has also been part of several Atari compilations on different platforms, such as Arcade Classics on the Sega Genesis, Paired with Asteroids and Yars' Revenge on the Game Boy Advance, Atari Classics Evolved on the PlayStation Portable, Retro Atari Classics on the Nintendo DS, and Atari: 80 Classic Games in One! for personal computers. It was also included in the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration (2022) compilation for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One.
Through a deal with Atari, Bally Gaming and Systems created a slot machine version of the game. Pong was also a minigame on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of TD Overdrive: The Brotherhood of Speed, but not on the Windows version.
Bushnell believed the best way to compete with copycats was to create better products. This led Atari to make sequels after Pong's release, including Pong Doubles, Super Pong, Quadrapong, and Pinpong. These games had similar graphics but added new features, such as Pong Doubles, which allowed four players to compete in pairs, and Quadrapong (also released by Kee Games as Elimination), which let players compete in a four-way match. Bushnell also planned a free-to-play version of Pong for children in doctor's offices. He first called it Snoopy Pong, using a cabinet shaped like Snoopy's doghouse with the character on top, but later changed it to Puppy Pong to avoid legal issues. He later used the game in his chain of Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants. In 1976, Atari released Breakout, a single-player version of Pong where the goal was to hit bricks on a wall with a ball. Like Pong, Breakout had many copies that copied its gameplay, such as Arkanoid, Alleyway, and Break 'Em All.
A 3D platform game with puzzle and shooter elements was reportedly being developed by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar in September 1995 under the title Pong 2000. It was part of a series of arcade game updates for the system and had an original storyline, but it was never released.
In 1999, Hasbro Interactive released a new game called Pong: The Next Level for home computers and the PlayStation. This game was part of a trend at the time of remaking popular arcade games for new platforms.