In case you missed it, I encourage you to laff with me at "Sons of Pong," a Boing Boing special feature showing ads for Pong clones from the birth of the vidgame industry, when your only concern was to "avoid missing ball for high score." These images and others are collected in the fun new book Everything You Knows Is Pong: How Mighty Table Tennis Shapes Our World. From my special feature, designed by our own Rob Beschizza:
In September 1972, Atari's Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn installed the prototype Pong machine at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. The idea was to make a computer game that was "so simple that any drunk in any bar could play." And boy, did they ever.
Now, was Pong a hit because America loved Ping Pong so much that they wanted to play it on TV too? Or as media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has said, was it empowering because finally anyone could control what was on the TV? Either or neither way, people lined up for their chance to "Avoid missing ball for high score," as per the machine's only instructions. Within just a few months, the Pong clone wars had begun.
