Why so many pongs from the same seller?

[Nicola]

An example.
Atari released 1 Pong system in 1975.
In 1976 Atari, alone, released 4 systems (plus 5 Sears systems).

Ok, chips were cheap and you had always to propose the newest game system...adding small features each time...but is this the only reason? Follow a costantly increasing demand?

[diskoboy]

Well, with one game, people tended to get sick of it very quickly. Usually the newer revisions would add a new game, or game variation. But they'd have about the same shelf life.

You didn't really have just one company, too. You had Magnavox, Atari/Sears, Coleco, and dozens of other smaller companies making home pong machines. And each of those companies had dozens of variants on their own machines.

[Captain Wrong]

Pong stand alones were a fad. The first year, there wasn't any competition. After that, everyone wanted a piece of the market and Atari wanted to cover all the price points and features. If they'd just crammed everything into one box, they'd get killed at the low end and just releasing a bare bones one would have left them out of the high.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

Also, the companies producing the systems were in a huge hurry to get their systems to market to take advantage of their popularity before it evaporated. General Instruments and other microchip manufacturers were in a similar hurry to make advancements to their pong-on-a-chip designs and get them to system manufacturers. As a result of those two dynamics, there was just a steady stream of new Pong systems coming out in regular cycles.

A company like Coleco would buy a lot of GI chips and throw them into a case and get them to market as fast as possible to take advantage of the Pong fad and then a couple months later, GI would put out a chip that had the same games but with color graphics, so Coleco would take the profits they made on the first system and buy a bunch of these new color chips and market a new system. Then GI would come up with a chip that played the same games and in color, but now also had four-player modes, so it would start all over again. And again and again as long as the popularity of the systems could keep up.


...word is bondage...

[XxHennersXx]

Also, the companies producing the systems were in a huge hurry to get their systems to market to take advantage of their popularity before it evaporated. General Instruments and other microchip manufacturers were in a similar hurry to make advancements to their pong-on-a-chip designs and get them to system manufacturers. As a result of those two dynamics, there was just a steady stream of new Pong systems coming out in regular cycles.

A company like Coleco would buy a lot of GI chips and throw them into a case and get them to market as fast as possible to take advantage of the Pong fad and then a couple months later, GI would put out a chip that had the same games but with color graphics, so Coleco would take the profits they made on the first system and buy a bunch of these new color chips and market a new system. Then GI would come up with a chip that played the same games and in color, but now also had four-player modes, so it would start all over again. And again and again as long as the popularity of the systems could keep up.


...word is bondage...

Off topic slightly...is it possible to modify one of those old pong machines to have "smaller paddles" like they did in that 70s show?

[Pantechnicon]

Off topic slightly...is it possible to modify one of those old pong machines to have "smaller paddles" like they did in that 70s show?

I've never seen the 70's Show but I don't see why this couldn't be possible. All your dealing with inside these machines is a single potentiometer for each controller. Probably a quickie wiring/soldering job and then you've just got to make it look nice with respect to the casing.

Why would you want smaller paddles anyway?

[Azraelscross]

to make it harder i belive was the reason in that episode. and amazingly Kelso did it.haha

[XxHennersXx]

I've never seen the 70's Show but I don't see why this couldn't be possible. All your dealing with inside these machines is a single potentiometer for each controller. Probably a quickie wiring/soldering job and then you've just got to make it look nice with respect to the casing.

Why would you want smaller paddles anyway?

i dont mean the controllers, I mean the actuall paddle on the screen. To make it harder to hit the ball.

[diskoboy]

i dont mean the controllers, I mean the actuall paddle on the screen. To make it harder to hit the ball.


I think alot of the later Pong machines had that built in as a feature. Even the VCS had the similar 'difficulty' switches. You just flipped a switch - smaller paddles.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

I don't think it would be possible to mod one of the GI chipset based pongs to have smaller paddles if that wasn't a feature of the chip, but with a few of the pongs that are not "Pong-on-a-chip," but actually do everything with individual chips, it would be quite possible. There were a number of articles in Popular Science and magazines like that at the time that talked about how to modify pong systems or even build your own.

With some of the GI chipset systems, there's modifications you can make that will actually let you play additional games that aren't by default enabled with that system. Usually this is just shooting games, though, which qould require a lightgun to play.

I've saved the chips out of a few broken Pong units I've come across over the years and one day I'd like to build my own system where you can select between a bunch of different games including Street Racer and Motocross and such.


...word is bondage...

[rbudrick]

Yeah, there were an amazing number of companies making rip-off pong units. Then Sanders'/Magnavox's licensing division cracked down, due to pressure from Ralph Baer for them to do so. They weren't even going to give a crap until he showed them how much money they could make suing people (and deservedly so).

-Rob

[Steve W]

It seems that Magnavox churned out all sorts of Pong variants. I've got three myself, and I've seen on sites like pong-story.com that they had loads more. It's crazy how many they put out in a short amount of time.

[Goblin]

I don't think it would be possible to mod one of the GI chipset based pongs to have smaller paddles if that wasn't a feature of the chip, but with a few of the pongs that are not "Pong-on-a-chip," but actually do everything with individual chips, it would be quite possible. There were a number of articles in Popular Science and magazines like that at the time that talked about how to modify pong systems or even build your own.


I just went down stairs to check the book "How to repair video games" and I found mods for the GI chips to increase the speed and randomize the ball, but I couldn't find any for the smaller paddle size. I do however recall seeing this and you are probably correct that it was done on one of the designs from Popular Electronics or Radio Electronics using discrete TTL chips. I have a CD with scans of most if not all of the articles from the time period I'll have to locate. Years ago I bought a whole bunch of stuff from a guy who used this information to build his own systems. I have scans of all his lab books including letters and application notes from GI, datasheets, and articles. I also have his boards for a home made tank game based on the AY-8700 and pong based on the AY-8500. I always intended to rebuild them as the pong unit was stripped for other parts by the original owner over the years, I just never got around to it. I really should find that box of stuff and either do it myself or else sell them to someone else who is interested. It's really cool stuff.

[XxHennersXx]

I built my pong unit from a kit.

http://www.vellemanusa.com/us/enu/product/view/?id=350694#

that thing.

[ubikuberalles]

If you want to figure out how the original Atari Pong worked, check out DanBoris' Tech Blog (http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=52) at Atari Age. You need to be pretty tech-savvy to figure it out but it's a damn good discussion on the topic.

[Aswald]

An example.
Atari released 1 Pong system in 1975.
In 1976 Atari, alone, released 4 systems (plus 5 Sears systems).

Ok, chips were cheap and you had always to propose the newest game system...adding small features each time...but is this the only reason? Follow a costantly increasing demand?


Depending on what Pong game systems you are talking about, it was a matter of relative advancement.

In the very beginning, back in the early 1970s, we were awed by a simple black and white arcade game called..."PONG!"

Now, consider what exactly that was. A black and white game. Dotted lines. Two (count `em!) rectangles, and one (whoa!) square. Oh, yes...and 2 numbers. BEEP. BOPPP.

And that was that.

Because this was so primitive, ANYTHING extra, no matter how minor by today's standards, was a great leap forward. Add 2 extra paddles? Color, of any sort, even if it looked like an "invisible overlay?" Or...BLOCKY-LOOKING VAGUELY-HUMAN LOOKING CHARACTERS (this was "much later on")?

We just had to get that ultra-cool newest advancement. And, of course, companies were advancing.

It's a case of you starting with an inch. A mere quarter-inch extra is, relatively speaking, a considerable addition.

This was one reason why there were so many- if ANYTHING extra could be added to the previous one, it was, in those days, something awesome.