Timeline | 1972: Pong

I decided to start my timeline with Pong. Pong was not the first video game, that distinction being unfortunately lost to history, nor was it the first commercially available video game, that title goes to Computer Space. However, Pong was the first commercially successful video game and can be directly credited with allowing Atari to be successful right up until the crash in 1983.

Originally released in Arcades in 1972, Pong was designed by Atari newcomer Allan Alcorn as a training excersize assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Alcorn made such a good game that Atari decided to try to sell it, they were already in the Arcade Gaming industry having released Computer Space to limited sales a year before in 1971. Pong became wildly successful to the point that Atari created a home version which was released in 1975.

While 'Pong for you home TV' wasn't the first home console it did boost console popularity and allow for the later success of the Atari 2600.

Unfortunately for Atari, the Magnavox Odyssey - an early video game home console, included a game known as table tennis. Nolan Bushnell was known to have played this at the Magnavox Profit Caravan in California in 1972 and while he was said to have been unimpressed by the game it likely influenced him to assign the Pong project to Alcorn. This would come back to bite Atari in the form of legal troubles in 1974 when they were sued by Magnavox and forced to pay royalties and delay the release of some of their other products (so that they did not have to disclose them to Magnavox).

All-in-all Pong was an incredibly important game in that it laid the foundation for what has become an incredibly large industry (estimated at 66 billion dollars in 2013), it also setup Atari for the first total domination of the home video game market with the Atari 2600.

A screenshot from Pong showing the two paddles, the 'net', ball and score.

If for some reason you have never played Pong you are missing out on a great game. Trivial by today's standards yet still fun to play, Pong consists of just a ball that can be bounced between two paddles. While this seems (and really is) quite rudimentary the game is made more interesting due to a few small touches from Alcorn including the fact that the ball returns at different angles depending on where it impacts the paddle, the fact that the ball increases in speed incrementally as the game progresses (until a miss at which time the speed is reset) and the fact that the paddles do not reach quite to the top or bottom edges of the screen. These small things along with the easy to learn two-player game play made Pong immensely popular in the arcades and as a home consoles.

Further Reading:

Wikipedia Articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

Reuters Article (where I got the 66 billion dollar estimate)
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/gameshow-e-idINDEE9590DW20130610

Site with a whole lot more info on Pong, Atari, Magnovox, etc.
http://www.pong-story.com/intro.htm