Before consoles, before cartridges, before anyone had a joystick in their living room, there was Pong. In 1972, a young Atari engineer named Allan Alcorn was handed what he thought was a simple training exercise by co-founder Nolan Bushnell, build a basic ping-pong game to learn the hardware. Instead, he created the game that launched the video game industry.
In this video, we dig into the origin story of Pong, from its predecessors to its home console release through Sears in 1975 — and why this ridiculously simple game became the spark that put a controller in the hands of an entire generation. If you grew up chasing that little white square across the screen, this one’s for you.
