Classic Mechanical Pong! The history of Atari's video game Pong arcade & consoles adapted into old style electro mechanical versions of Pong!

In this documentary, we'll trace the history of weird classic electromechanical Pong games from the dawn of Atari's Pong video game in arcades and on consoles, the games that tried to emulate the Pong video game experience for simpler cheaper electromechanical hardware to recreate the Pong variant video game gameplay. These are games that had to use mechanical engineering to compete with what was then the latest in video game technology using the simplest technology around, mechanical and electromechanical devices, simple wiring and relays. Yes from the earliest days of Pong, there were games that tried to be pong, but without the video game technology.

1972, the same year as the classic Magnovox Odyssey and Atari's Pong came out there was Midway's Table Tennis an attempt at an electromechanical arcade game based on Pong style variant gameplay, but using the simple electromechanical tech, as other manufacturers raced to ripoff Pong as a video game. Table Tennis is a forgotten game, barely a footnote. But it wasn't just arcade games that aped the Pong video game's style, it also happened in products for the home while Table Tennis copied the classic video game Pong for an EM arcade game, Marx Toy's TV Tennis did so for the home console version of Pong. Yes, a year before Pong itself was actually brought home as a dedicated console, the Pong video game style was delivered in a low cost and low tech EM TV Tennis game, which debuted a year before the video game, helping satiate the public's appetite for Pong. And even when the real Pong console came out the following year in 1975, TV Tennis still sold a ton of units, with it's $15 price tag compared to the real Pong coming in at $100!

And what about pinball? The head to head version of a pinball game also shared similarities to Pong, and this video will take a look at the electro mechanical PvP pinball variations! Yes both Pong video game and pinball games can trace their roots to EM arcade games.

And of course the classic Blip The Digital Game one of the most popular handheld games in the history of preGameboy era of handheld games. Coming out just two years after the Pong console of 1975, it was called the Digital Game, which was weird because it wasn't! A mechanical invention, technically electro mechanical, but really was pure mechanical engineering with a wind up motor! It barely qualifies as an electro mechanical game but it was a hit, even while other handheld games had better tech. Blip was fun, and a giant success.

And what of mechanical and electro mechanical precursors to the Pong video game? There weren't consoles or handhelds in that time, but there definitely were arcade games before the video games, and Pong shares a lot in gameplay and branding to these mechanical arcade games that preceded it. You can find Pong's gameplay roots go all the way back to the earliest electro mechanical games, and even the earliest preEM arcade games. Yes, the "ball batting" game was essentially Pong but in a mechanical setting, and some of them even branded themselves just as the Pong video games would decades later. One of the early examples is Exhibit Supply's Ping Pong from the 1930s! And note how the ball batting arcade game has a striking similarity to the head to head pinball arcade games that popped up in the 1950s.

And Pong shared more than just gameplay with these games, they were branded and marketed in the same fashion. When Pong came out in video game arcades and tons of Pong clones were coming out, many would brand them as ping pong or tennis types of sports, but almost as popular was the branding of the Pong video game as hockey or soccer. That was also the case for these mechanical versions of Pong in the arcade, home console (but not the handheld) versions of the game, they were all often branded and marketed as these same sports as the video arcade game version of Pong. This video delves into all the details of this weird bit of video game history, and also the history of EM electro mechanical games, and the history of arcade games in general, the history of console video games, and also the handheld games.

Art Jacob Hughes, Music Chosen Robot

Special thanks to sources: Larry Bieza, Arcade USA, SherryLouToys.com, Zzzarko, Retro Game Living Room, Quertyn, Niklas Roy, Ebony Magazine, Goal.com, Brent Martin, the EM Electro Mechanical and Mechanical Arcade Games FB Group, EM Arcade Games FB group, The Strong Museum, Wikipedia, Automatic Pleasures (Costa), Drop Coin Here (Rubin), ArcadeMuseum.com, IPDB.org (Internet Pinball Database), Freddy Bailey, BF Skinner Foundation
#pong #mechanicalpong #ataripong #blip #TVtennis