Atari is celebrating 40 years with of Pong with the launch of Pong World, available now on iOS for free.
Pong World is a re-imagined take on the pop culture classic and the first-ever official new Pong game for smartphones and tablet devices. In the game, players choose one of many Pong paddles and battle against opponents on various themed boards, experiencing the game in either classic mode or all-new gameplay modes including Blitz and Hotseat. Pong World is available now as a free download. Those interested can download the game here.
Pong World features include:
- Wield five different paddles to add your personal touch, with more to unlock, like Shaggy, Chompers and Sir Bouncelot
- Pack your paddle around the world in four levels including the Jungle, Boulevard, Cathedral, and the Moon
- Multiple gameplay modes Classic, Blitz and Hotseat offer a whole new experience to classic PONG gameplay
- Slice through progressing difficulty levels as players hone their touchscreen talents
- Unlock in-game achievements and compare high scores with friends on the leaderboards
For those of you that don’t know, Pong was an arcade game that was later ported to the home consoles. It was a simple concept of tennis where two sticks were present at the opposite ends of a screen and a ball bounced between them.
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Here are some fun facts about how Pong came into being. In 1958, a physicist named William Higginbotham (yes, that was his name) created a game called tennis for two. This was during the era when computers were the size of entire rooms so of course not many people knew of its existence. Fast forward to 1966, Ralph Baer (a German-born American video game pioneer, inventor, engineer, known as “The Father of Video Games”, who is noted for his many contributions to games and the video game industry) chased a crazy dream of a TV you can play. In 1968, Baer invents and patents a Ping Pong style game and the rest as they say is history.
For those of you that are interested in taking a trip down memory lane and want to know a bit about Atari, the rise and fall of the company that gave us Pong can do so here.