Introducing My Daughter to Pong — Every* Game Console in Order
Originally posted on my Medium account
Following Sarah’s introduction to tennis-like video games on the Magnavox Odyssey, written about in my previous entry here , I introduce her to Pong on Atari’s dedicated Pong home video game console.
Purpose Recap and Game Console Criteria
As a recap, I am in the process of introducing every* video game console to my daughter Sarah. My objective is outlined in my first article in the series here , but the gist of it is that I thought it would be a fun bonding experience and I believe it may help frame progress of interactive technologies. I hypothesized that earlier games and their input methods may be easier for younger audiences to grasp, and I decided to test this with my daughter as long as she appears interested.
The criteria I had originally outlined, which help determine which game consoles Sarah and I will cover, are as follows:
Why Pong?
Many, myself included, view Pong as the first commercially successful video game (Computer Space , released in 1971, was not nearly as successful as Pong). When Atari released the arcade version of Pong in 1972, it stood out in arcades, typically filled with pinball and electromechanical games (e.g., Periscope from Sega, released in 1966) at the time, as an innovative, competitive, video-based game. Video games introduced the concept of utilizing digital components and displays for gameplay and minimized the use of mechanical parts, common in electromechanical games, typically only using them for modes of user input, such as the knobs in Pong.
The success of Pong led to a shift in the gaming industry. Game developers began to adopt the screen-based nature of video games as a medium to experiment and create new worlds in a digital space. Video-based arcade games were often cheaper to produce and required less maintenance compared to electromechanical games, which led to higher demand from arcade operators.
Pong, however, was not the first consumer-accessible video game, or even the first tennis / ping-pong-like video game. As mentioned in my previous article , the Magnavox Odyssey home video game console introduced consumers to the “Pong” style of video games in September 1972, one month before Atari released Pong in the arcades in November 1972. I imagine most readers of this have heard of Pong, even if they have never played it, demonstrating the impact Pong had on the gaming industry. While the Atari Pong console does not fit each of the game console criteria listed above, I am including it in this series due to Pong’s significant impact on gaming.
Atari’s Pong
Following the release of Pong in the arcades, Atari released a home version of Pong in 1975 as a dedicated console. No interchangeable cartridges, no alternate modes, just vanilla Pong. Atari would go on to release a similar console, “Super Pong”, with multiple games, all slight variations on the core Pong gameplay.
Atari’s Pong: Sears Edition
The same year Atari released their dedicated home Pong console, Atari partnered with Sears to release Pong under Sears’ in-house “Tele-Games” brand. Other than aesthetic changes, both the Atari and Tele-Games Pong consoles are functionally the same.
Input
Atari’s Pong console features an on-off switch, a “Start” button (I believe this is the first instance of a “Start” button on a video game console), and two knobs (potentiometers) to control the paddle for each player.
Players compete against each other by hitting the ball with their paddle, controlled by rotating one of the knobs. That’s about it. It’s Pong.
The controls appeared ergonomic and graspable for Sarah. She was able to easily reach for everything and was able to quickly understand how to interact with the game on the TV.
Sarah’s Experience
Sarah had been playing with her Pong consoles for around two months at the time of this writing. In the beginning, she appeared to have lost interest in “playing games” (her usual way to request playing with the game consoles) after the first few days playing Pong, and I was not going to push her to play anything she did not enjoy. After a month of not playing, she began asking to play games again and suddenly it was back in our semi-daily rotation of activities.
I think her initial dislike of Pong was due to the game’s difficulty, mostly cause by the speed of the ball and sensitivity of the knobs (note: I cleaned the potentiometers of each Pong console to minimize jumpiness), similar to her reaction to Table Tennis for the Magnavox Odyssey. Even after understanding which turn of the knob goes up, which goes down, and how to hit the ball, it was too easy to move the paddle off the screen and the paddles seemed too difficult to control due to sensitivity.
Sarah appeared to pick up on the controls much more quickly than she did with the Odyssey, likely due to only moving on the vertical axis in Pong, as opposed to moving both vertically and horizontally in Table Tennis on the Odyssey. The sensitivity appeared to be more of an issue than it was on the Odyssey, however, and losing the paddle off-screen caused confusion for her on both consoles.
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Sarah Starts to “Get It”
Early on, Sarah was able to connect that when she turned the knob, the paddle moved up or down, but it took a while for her to understand how to translate that turning the knob right makes the paddle go up, and turning the knob left makes the paddle go down. For example, when I attempted to coach her and I asked her to move the paddle “up”, she would often mix up directions and go the opposite way. Note that at the time Sarah was playing this, she was very good at knowing her left from her right and up from down.
After a few weeks, she was able to reliably remember the direction translation. She knew she wanted to hit the ball with the paddle to score a point. She was finally actually playing the game.
Sarah’s method of play was a bit unorthodox at times, though occasionally effective. Sarah, 3 years old at this time, had not fully mastered her fine motor skills and struggled with the sensitive controls in Pong, rarely able to hit the ball with her paddle intentionally.
I noticed her experimenting with various methods to hit the ball, such as her sweeping method, where she tried to quickly move the paddle as fast as she could, hopefully hitting the ball as it gets closer to her goal line.
Readers may notice most photos I have so far are of Sarah playing alone. While Pong is a competitive two-player game, I did not have many opportunities to play with her, as most of the time she wanted me to play on my own Pong console:
When she did allow me to play on the same console, she, a right-handed preschooler, would keep pulling the console away from me as she locked in:
Ultimately, Sarah appeared to enjoy her time with Pong. While she struggled with the sensitive controls, she kept at it and celebrated the rare points she earned.
Pong Clones and Nintendo’s Introduction to Home Video Games
Following the release of Atari’s home Pong console, a slew of Pong-clone consoles, all capable of playing Pong-like virtualized tennis on a TV, flooded the market from companies like Coleco, Philips, and Nintendo.
Although this console going directly against my listed criteria for game consoles to include in the series, this Pong-clone is significant due to it being the first home video game console released by Nintendo. Before the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), before the Game & Watch, Nintendo released a Pong-clone console, the “Color TV-Game 6".
The Color TV-Game 6 is a Pong-clone console and features 6 slight variations on Pong, displayed in color. It featured 3 main game modes: virtual Tennis, Hockey, and Volleyball, each with a fast mode and double-paddle mode.
Sarah’s favorite part of her time playing with this console seemed to be all the stage colors it had for different game modes:
A major issue I noticed with the Color TV-Game 6 is the poor ergonomics. Atari’s home Pong console is angled toward players, allowing players to easily reach the knobs while playing and watching the game on the TV. Conversely, the Color TV-Game 6 is flat and the knobs point towards the ceiling. This angle appeared to have made it difficult for Sarah to play, leading to unnatural hand and arm movements for basic actions like turning. Note the awkward angle Sarah is turning her arm due to the flat control base:
Despite the awkward angle of the console and controls, Sarah appeared to have a lot of fun with the Color TV-Game 6 due to the smoother controls, compared to the knobs/potentiometers in Atari’s Pong, and the various stage colors in the different game modes.
What’s Next
Next on our list is the Fairchild Channel F from 1976, the first video game console to use a microprocessor and interchangeable game cartridges. The controls are unique. Hopefully Sarah will like it!