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Credit: Frmorrison
The Atari Pong arcade machine made its debut on this day in 1972. According to the iconic games firm, “from an initial investment of $500, Atari made its first million,” from the success of Pong. Looking back, from 2025, it seems incredible that this simple blippy bat-and-ball game sparked an entertainment industry sector that would go on to eclipse Hollywood. Some recent estimates suggest the global video games business is currently worth as much as $300 billion.
Though an extraordinary milestone for the reasons set out above, there are several other remarkable facts behind Pong’s sparking of the video games industry. One of the biggest stories in Pong lore is that it was developed as a training exercise, not as a pioneering interactive entertainment medium.
Sites like Wikipedia say Pong “was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell.” Recollections about the origin of this electronic ping-pong idea diverge, though: some say it was directly influenced by a similar Magnavox Odyssey console game, while others (perhaps understandably, given the patent infringement lawsuit) say otherwise.
No CPU required
From today’s perspective, it seems strange that an arcade machine didn’t even have a CPU at its heart. However, this is true for Pong and several other early gaming machines/systems.
Rather than a CPU and software, Alcorn built the game experience entirely from hard-wired transistor-transistor logic (TTL) circuits. Dedicated circuits were created for each aspect of the arcade experience, such as video signal generation, paddle movement, collision detection, and scoring – all wired together to work in harmony. A simple oscillator generated the blippy audio feedback, which became iconic in its own right.
Pong in the home, and in your hands
Pong arcade machines were extremely popular with venues for their quarter-extracting power. Nevertheless, Atari saw the opportunity to market it to consumers, starting with Home Pong (1975). With the launch of the Atari 2600 cartridge-based system in 1977, a Pong-style compendium of paddle-driven bat and ball games was available as the Video Olympics launch title.
Versions of Pong were also included among the 200+ titles built into the Atari Gamestation Go, which we reviewed earlier this month. So, this pioneering video game is still earning for Atari, though we spent far more time playing similar (bat, ball, and brick wall) Breakout releases and remakes.
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