Imagesource: https://pippinbarr.com/

PONG – even more than 50 years after its initial release – such a simple game concept can still captivate. However, it's hard to describe the genuine fascination, especially for the home versions of PONG in the 70s and 80s, in today's terms.

Back then, the television was just a display device – directly beaming from the electron gun into our brains. The idea that it could also have an input device, made from flesh was revolutionary, something that took a while to sink in. We see where that idea has led us today. 😌

PONG holds a special place in my heart. It must have been around '83 or '84 when I traveled half of Berlin by subway and bus, all alone, to retrieve a broken PONG console from my uncle. After a successful soldering operation, it took all my parents had to pry my brother and me away from the black-and-white TV in our living room.

It seems Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Pippin Barr aka @pippinbarr, shares the same fascination for the game. Back in 2012, he released 36 versions of the game as Flash variations. He recently redeveloped all versions in Javascript using the Phaser 3 library and made them available for free to play in your browser.

If you fancy a round of PONG, or Laser PONG, or Shit PONG, or … any other version, you can find it here.