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The History of Pong
sn0wdude writes "Who hasn't played PONG? Everything on PONG! Has pictures from all systems it was available on, even systems schematics (to make your own). The 'Make-It-Yourself Systems' (kid adverts), etc..." You see, Pong was the evil twin brother of the little duckling called Ping... oh, wait, wrong story. Seriously, this site has everything you never wanted to know about Pong.
Full details are available at Woz's website.
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
I heard Excel has a flight simulator hidden somewhere, but I've never seen it...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
The journey is as important as where we are. It's fascinating to reflect on the birth of the computer and video game industry, to reflect on the tremendous progress, and to get some perspective. When geeks are complaining about getting "only" 50fps on Quake III, articles like this are a good reality check.
They don't mention Pong Kombat, which is (as it sounds) a combination of Mortal Komabt and pong. It's only available for windows (as far as i remember), but it's hilarious. Make sure you read the FAQ's on the site.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
How typical. A guy who deserves the money that would have come from patenting the very idea of video games does not even bother,
And then all the greedy jerks who do not deserve it wind up patenting all kinds of trivial junk....
feh
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Baer seems to use the same sort of warped reasoning to make his points that folks like the government spooks use when they try to restrict encryption, or that the music biz suits use when they try to dump napster, or that microsoft uses when they try to explain that Linux is unamerican, and we'd all really be better off with single-use software that goes stale like a loaf of bread. An oven-fresh version of Outlook, every time you read your mail! Gee, thanks. I just find Baer's reasoning to be severely twisted.
It's useful for participants to tell their own stories, but beware when they describe the work of their adversaries.
can be found on Telus/Clearnet's website. It's called Quong and requires flash, but it's quite fun. Check it out here.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
Breakout, not Pong. It was only in System 7.5, 7.5.1, and 7.5.2
The significance of Breakout and Apple? Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked at Atari and, as partners, created Breakout.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Ehh anyways, I'd like to see the smallest pong source code (not cramming multiple lines onto one line). Just think it'd be cool after seeing that (was it) 15 line perl script to deCSS.
A Pong faq. Funny, sure.
An existential pong faq? Heeeee-larious.
Here
check out my band. Bratwurst Orange we play pong on an Odyssy^2.
when Push Comes to Shove
I play PONG on my Kurzweil K2600 Workstation Synthesizer...h tm l
http://www.hyperindex.com/k2/k_pong.htm
...describes how to access this hidden function. When the ball bounces off the walls, it plays whatever instrument is assigned to the drum channel. And then another sound for the paddle...Personally, I prefer a more traditional approach:
Timpani and snare for my PONG sessions.
If you get a score of 76, you can access the FM algorithm that Kurzweil had to remove for fear of a lawsuit from Yamaha for FM synthesis.
Its in there, but you have to learn how to PONG first.
If you don't know about the best synthesizer and PONG system EVER MADE made, then:
http://www.kurzweilmusicsystems.com/html/k2600.
Besides PONG, it also makes for a great Blue nightlight!
From 'Who did it first?
Well, of course it isn't a video game because it isn't a game! They're tracking real, live missiles. Stupid.
That whole entire page is the most self serving load of tripe I've ever read. Ralph Baer apparently managed to fool a judge into believing that HigginBotham's work didn't represent prior art and thinks it means something besides more than him retaining his ability to extort money over a long since dead piece of technology.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Nope. Where's the new 3D Pong games by Hasbro that stunk up the house? If you're going to include everything you have to include everything.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
This all started out with a real-time minicomputer game called Space War, popular back in the early 70s. (Here's an ancient Rolling Stone piece.) Atari's first project was an embedded version of Space War for pinball arcades and bars. The official Atari story was that Pong was invented later because users (especially bar patrons) found Space War too complicated to learn. Actually, Pong was released first, in order to test some of the circuitry developed for Space War. The first prototype appeared in a bar in Sunnyvale. The next day, Atari got a phone call complaining that the prototype was broken. Nothing was actually broekn, but the coin mechanism had turned itself off when its receptacle filled up with quarters. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Oh no, that can't possibly be correct. I have it from a very reliable source at Microsoft that a great feature of proprietary code is that you can trust the company to not put easter eggs and other backdoors into the software. They run code reviews there, because as they like to say "many eyes make all bugs NOT DEEP". So to think that something as large as a flight simulator would escape their watchful eyes is just ... humerous.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Don't tell me this isnt totally cool :)
make your own pong game with a little soldering and a PIC microcontroller, generates simple black and white NTSC output and everything.
VCR Pong
Klowner
Last week a friend and I went to Bletchley Park, where British codebreakers broke the German Enigma cipher during World War II. The site is run by (very) enthusiastic amateurs, and just about every conceivable kind of anorak was there displaying something.
A local computer society has a room at the site devoted entirely to old computer equipment. Among the nerdjunk were a number of old Pong machines. My friend and I played a game and a half, at which point we were bored stiff. But it was a nice nostalgia trip while it lasted.
So if you want to play a few games of Pong on vintage equipment (or you're into WWII, or crypto, or old toys, or you want to see the works of the Leighton Buzzard Model Boat Club, or...), Bletchley Park is the place to go.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I seem to recall that Pong is a popular easter egg. Places I've heard that it is:
1) Hidden somewhere in the open firmware of Macs that have open firmware.
2) Hidden in Microsoft Excel
3) Hidden in the about box of some version of the Mac OS.
Can anyone verify the above? Or know of any others?
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
"You see, Pong was the evil twin brother of the little duckling called Ping... oh, wait, wrong story."
That may be the wrong story, but the intro sounds ridiculously more interesting than the history of a white ball getting the beating of its life from two white paddles.
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Since Conker's Bad Fur Day last Tuesday? Or since Phantasy Star Online in late January? No, I guess I hadn't. But Black & White will be coming out soon enough, so I'm not worried...
Actually, gameplay has been steadily decreasing in (default, not including mods) quake versions, while the pallete and geometric complexity have been increasing.
Halflife has amazing gameplay, fast action with a bit of precise jumping, I'll admit it can be tedious, but it's a good mix.
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.