Pong - the Birth of Gaming

---

I have been into gaming since the 1970s. I was born in the early 70s and I was lucky enough to be given some of the latest consoles of the times. In this series, I’ll go through the revolutionary evolution of gaming that has seen the graphics and gameplay of Pong evolve into Call of Duty and others.

The first console I ever owned was the Magnavox Odyssey. Well, I say I owned it but I was one of six and we all owned it. It was a Christmas gift and boy did our parents get their money’s worth with it. The game Pong and a football version of the same game, were the only games that were released on the console, but that was more than enough for a kid in the 1970s.

---

Atari released Pong as an arcade game in the 1970s

---

Pong is one of the earliest arcade video games. It is a table tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. The game was originally manufactured by Atari, which released it in 1972 as an arcade game, but it was also released on the Magnavox Odyssey, and brought families around the world hours upon hours of revolutionary fun.

Pong quickly became a success and was the first commercially successful video game, which helped to establish the video game industry along with the first home console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Soon after its release, several companies began producing games that copied Pong's gameplay, and eventually released new types of games, but to any 1970s kid, Pong was the only game that mattered.

---

Magnavox Odyssey - every good household had one in the 1970s

---

To a generation of gamers accustomed to 64-bit graphics and blazing processor power, Pong must seem absurdly low-tech. The graphics consisted of a black background with and white line down the middle, one white rectangle (rackets) either side of the screen, and a white square (ball). Controlling the rackets a player would use paddles with knobs, and just like in Table Tennis the aim was to outmanoeuvre your opponent and make them miss the ball.

There was a football version of the game too, where instead of only having one rectangle, you had a few to hit back into the goal. But trying to control more than one rectangle – well, that was oh so confusing, especially for me being only about 5 years old when my elder brothers were almost in their teens.

---

The height of the 1970s gaming industry

---

So very simple, but oh how my 5 siblings and I had so many long evenings at the weekends while our parents were out. We, like most families back then, only had one TV, so our time was when the parents went out. We had competitions, arguments and most of all bragging rights until the following weekend.

It was fantastic and many a time I think back with fond memories about playing Pong on black and white TVs. But little did I know how fast the IT and gaming world would evolve. In the next edition of this series, I’ll take a look into the early 80s and and how the graphics evolved from sticks to stick men and beyond.

But for now I’m going to reminisce over my first love.

---