I had board games when I was a kid like Monopoly, Break the Ice, Sorry, Trouble (with the new and improved the Pop -O- Matic Bubble!) and Pay Day. Board games were a part of life when friends came over or at family events. We would either have fun or a fight over the games.
In 1977 that I got my first video game. That would be Pong. I loved it and spent hours playing the version of paddling the ball against the wall when a friend was not around to play. This was a new concept entirely to plug this console into our Curtis Mathes television and start playing table tennis on the TV screen.
This didn’t stop the board games, but it did mark a change that was coming. In the next couple of years, I would go to the “Pizza Hangout” (a pizza place where the kids hung out in our small town) and play Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Defender after school with friends. By the 80s, video games were everywhere…and this simple black and white digital ping-pong game helped push it along.
Pong was invented by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney who worked at Atari. Pong was first commercially released in 1972. It was a black and white screen with paddles and the objective was pretty clear… You would have to go to an arcade to play it.
Atari released Home Pong in a limited release in 1975, which you could get through Sears. It sold around 150,000 units that Christmas season.
Because of the success, other companies came out with consoles. Magnavox rereleased their Odyssey, also Coleco, and soon Nintendo.
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Pong was the bomb. We got an Atari system for Christmas in ’78. I think it lasted a few months before it stopped working. That was the only game system we or I ever owned.
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It amazes me that something so simple could entertain…but then I guess it wasn’t simple. I never was a modern game guy.
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Funny. My brother and I had Pong also. Our dad–colorful character–came across one. He presented it to us for Christmas–unwrapped. You’re the only other person I know of who had one. We loved ours, thought it was a blast.
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Mine was harvest-gold…that seventies color and I was 10…I loved it. My friends and I would have tournaments on it… I see my son’s games and think…look how far we have come…but it made me happy.
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Oh, I saw this post of yours last night and it made me smile. I used to play this in a youth club I belonged to in the early 1970s (the age range was 16 – 24). Everyone else was bored with it, but I never was! They also had a pinball machine… I was better at PONG.
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My mom bought me the TV version and I would spend hours on this game. I saw it later on in the arcade.
It was so new and exciting.
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Isn’t it funny how that seems, now? That something that we thought was new and exciting could have been so simple compared to what we have now? I’d still enjoy playing it now!
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I do still like it also. My wife Jennifer gave me a Virtual Headset for Christmas. It is truly incredible…I can’t believe technology has come as far as it has. From PONG to what we have now.
I would have loved blogging as a kid. Our librarian at my Jr. High School would order me Beatle books to read. What I wouldn’t have given to ask someone over about the culture and everything else…wait just a minute Val…I still do!
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