pong visionary arriving for game on
Allan Alcorn
ACMI is delighted to announce that Allan Alcorn, the original designer of the videogame Pong, will make the trip to Melbourne for the opening of the Game On exhibition.
This will be Alcorn's first visit to Melbourne and while here he will give two free lunchtime talks, on Thursday 6 March and Friday 7 March.
Released in 1972, Pong was the first arcade game to achieve widespread popularity. It's success ushered in the 'golden age' of arcade games, with huge hits such as Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.
In 1975, after the massive success of the arcade game, Atari had even more success with a new home version of Pong that could be played on their early home consoles: entertainment units that plugged into the TV, enabling the user to play videogames in their own lounge room.
It was so wildly successful that Atari were established as the market leader in the early home videogame market, with a turnover of more than $40 million in its first 3 years of operation.
The historical significance Pong cannot be underestimated - its success created an entirely new industry that had not existed previously. And yet, Pong was not the first videogame to be invented.
The first videogame is widely considered to be the 1962 computer game Space War. It was created by research scientists who designed it on a computer that was so large it took up most of a room.
Pong was not the first coin-operated (arcade) videogame either: that honour went to Computer Space, which was released the previous year (1971) but failed to take off because of its complex instructions.
Nor was Pong the first table tennis game either! In the months before Pong was released on the market, pioneering game developer Ralph Baer was promoting his Magnavox Odyssey, the first-ever home console, demonstrating its table tennis game at various trade shows.
So what made Pong stand out above the rest?
Many think it was because it was so astoundingly simple to play. It was, so legend goes, created with the idea that it should be so simple that "that any drunk in any bar could play!" In fact, the first Pong arcade games had only two instructions: "Deposit Quarter" and "Avoid missing ball for high score".
A playable big screen version of Pong, an original Pong arcade game and an early Pong home console will be on display as part of the Game On exhibition at ACMI, opening Thursday 6 March.
Exhibition details are available here
The Story of Pong Thu 6 Mar, 12pm
In Conversation with Al Alcorn Fri 7 Mar, 12pm
Published Friday, 22 February 2008
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