GoKawiilThe Very First Video Game Was Just a Box in the Corner of a Bar On the Birth of PONG and the Rise of Atari
A revolution was televised in 1972. It cost beer drinkers 25¢ a play. After work, thirsty folks rambled into Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, CA to knock back frothy, cool mugs and test their skill against the cruel silver ball. Cheap beer and pinball characterized this workaday watering hole, as did peanut shells casually tossed to the floor. One late summer day, those eager to pull the plunger on Bally’s Skyrocket or Gottlieb’s groovy 4 Square encountered a strange, sedate intruder encroaching upon the world of titillating backglass art, hypnotic playfields, and the cacophony of clamorous clang.
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There, conspicuously perched on a wooden barrel-cum-pedestal, sat a small hand-painted orange contraption with contact paper decorating its sides in the sordid splendor of woodgrain, its earth tones very much of an era steeped in a melody of harvest gold, rust, and avocado hues. The gizmo’s stout bluntness raised the question: “What is it?” Its modest cabinet revealed nothing more than a small, black and white Hitachi TV. This tube emitted weird photons set deep in a cabinet of curiosity with its protruding wooden bezel deceptively amplifying the dimension of the TV screen, a diminutive 13-inches.
In contrast to a conventional TV, this screen didn’t display broadcast television. A mesmerizing phosphorous square ball “bouncing” across the small screen divided by what resembles a “net” has replaced All in the Family. Thin rectangles, possibly “paddles” move vertically. Numbers—“the score”—flash left and right above the “court.”
One spot. Two paddles. A square ball, net, and score. That’s it.
Sparse, frighteningly minimal compared to the tawdriness of the typical pinball playfield. Beneath the screen a brushed steel plate houses two knobs, one for each pair of hands to turn. Whereas with pinball a player can prod, pulsate, and press on their own here, a player has no choice but to compete directly against another person. This thing’s a social mixer, taking two to tango. Knobs are intuitive, familiar. They already twist to adjust a Volkswagen Beetle’s AM/FM radio tuner or lower the volume on a wooden TV console at home. Instructions are absent. A single, monosyllabic word appears in all-caps SHOUTING this thing’s name: “PONG.”
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The prototype to PONG proved so wildly popular and profitable, its innards couldn’t digest the success.
It isn’t accompanied by “PING” to make this device legible, a little more obvious to the uninitiated or inebriated. Christening the machine took priority over explaining what to do with it, though its on-screen score, divided court with oppositional paddles make it largely perceptible. The basic ingredients are all there.
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