Eventually, all of one's childhood idols fall on hard times. Now, it's Pong.
Atari's U.S. subsidiary, the creator of Pong, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, slain by a flock of Angry Birds and a school of Fruit Ninjas. The company has gone through numerous owners in its 40-plus-year history, adapting to the vicissitudes of the video game market along the way. And it will probably resurrect itself once again, but the glory days of gaming and Pong will probably never return.
Synonymous with games like Breakout and Centipede, Atari was once a suburban phenomena and as much as a part of American culture as disco and earth shoes. During the first season of Saturday Night Live back in 1975, Tom Davis and Al Franken used Pong as a prop for several sketches (all the viewer saw was the rather inept game play on the black-and-white Pong screen). Who would have thought that Franken would become a U.S. Senator, or that in the years to come people would rather post pictures of their food online rather than play games?
But while no one misses polyester leisure suits (well, almost no one), many of us long for the early days of video games.
A large portion of the appeal of these original games was their low-fi approach. The controls didn't have elaborate physics programs behind them. They were crude and inaccurate as all getout. And that was half the fun. If you wanted accuracy, you could go out in the backyard and throw a football around.
