#2: Pong (1972, Atari)

It's Pong. What is there to say about it? It's gaming in the raw. You've got a paddle, the other player's got a paddle, you bounce a steadily accelerating ball back and forth and whoever wins gets the girl and saves the day. I could go on and on about how significant Pong was to gaming history, but the book does a fantastic job of that.

The version of Pong I played for this post is part of the Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator, or DICE. It's the most accurate version you're going to get short of finding a Pong machine which would probably take a bit of work. I know I said I wasn't going to be strict over accuracy when it came to these entries but it turns out you can't get Pong in MAME anymore. Either way, there's not much to say about it because, well, it's Pong.

If you really want to play some Pong, there's no shortage of options. If you just want straight Pong, that's easy enough to find. But maybe you've got a flair for the exotic. Maybe vanilla Pong isn't enough for you and you want a Pong-based fighting game with fatalities. Pong Kombat's got you covered there. Maybe you want Pong in 3D; try Pong: The Next Level on PC or PSX. And maybe you want Pong that you can play by yourself. A version where, I don't know, you use the ball to break bricks or something like that. We'll get there. For now, we just want Pong.