# Pong

*Series 1: the based 44 | LEGENDARY | 1/44*

By [gaming is based.](https://paragraph.com/@gib) · 2025-09-20

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Pong wasn't the first video game that Atari made, but it was the one that made Atari a global phenomenon.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8a97d102cadc155473b856e51dd529e91608c5287c8c50aca6322141544485e8.png)

The task to build a tennis like game video game was given to Allan Alcorn who was a new hire at Atari. One of the most incredible and unthinkable (nowadays) thing about Pong was that there was no software involved. Allan Alcorn created Pong using only Transistor-to-Transistor Logic (TTL) since microprocessors were so expensive back in the day.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/e512dfa64747dd3404bbb3049a048fa5715a476e7462b04f12646f51af62e468.png)

By Evan-Amos - Own work, Public Domain, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17168362](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17168362)

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/9bf98f96927a7265e9290d647a78a7504a4660795f89ecfc9828c586ace08874.png)

By Magnavox - [https://i.redd.it/sh1dypss5o821.jpg](https://i.redd.it/sh1dypss5o821.jpg), Fair use, [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65167330](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65167330)

Pong was a copy, or rather improvement on Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis. Nolan Bushnell played the game at a tradeshow and then instructed Alcorn to make Pong. The approach taken (using TTL) and the game design and mechanics made it a wild success. Scoring and angles were two key innovations/differences from Tennis on the Odyssey.

Pong is frequently referred to as the birth of the video games industry. It was a massive hit becoming an iconic arcade game. Atari was able to make a lot of money from it and that in turn encouraged others to take the leap and see game development as a viable business!

The US had succeeded in cementing the video games industry with Pong. It would be only a few short years before Japan came knocking dominate the area!

Additional Resources
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Build your own Pong: [Modular Ping - Alex J. Lowry's Electronics Homepage](https://alex-j-lowry.github.io/mdlrping.html)

David Winter's awesome site that covers the history of Pong in great detail: [Pong-Story: Main page](https://pong-story.com/intro.htm)

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*Originally published on [gaming is based.](https://paragraph.com/@gib/pong)*