MADRID, Dec. 3 (Portaltic/EP) –
the famous arcade pongone of the first computer games in history, celebrates its 50th anniversary establishing itself as the game that gave rise to the beginning of the entire video game industry given the great success it had among gamers since its release.
Pong’s design was the work of American computer scientist and electronic engineer Allan Alcornwho worked at the atari companycreated in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell for the development of games and ideas.
In this framework, Alcorn and Bushnell (who included in the process some improvements to make the game more interesting) they released Pong to the market in the form of an arcade machineinstalling the first one in a local bar, and eventually building such a following that it was crowned as the first successful commercial game.
Following this line, in 1973 Atari began manufacturing arcade machines put what they were sent for all USA and later to other countries. Two years later, the company created a home version of Pong that ended up selling more than 150,000 unitsaccording to its own official page.
It was thanks to this notoriety that Pong acquired that it was understood that the video game market generated a lot of income and that it was an important field to develop. Specifically, Atari sold more than 35,000 Pong machines and, as a result of its appearance, they began to produce many similar machines with other games which have also become classics such as the Tetris or, later, the Street Fighter.
The game has a very simple dynamic that resembles the table tennis. Simply, two paddles (simulated as a vertical stripe) and a ball (which is a point) are used. In addition, a vertical dashed line appears in the middle of the screen that separates the two fields.
The Pong’s goal is to defeat the opponent by being the first to accumulate ten points. To do this, the player has to get the opponent to lose the ball, which will get a point.
Pong can be played with two players or with a player version against the computer. But, later, new versions were created as double pongwhich was an update to the original game that allowed play four people, in which the board changes to a grid with two players on each side. Even so, he kept his design in black and white with simple geometric shapes.
