When Pong Was King

This morning, our pals at BoingBoing alerted us to a new book by Roger Bennett and Eli Horowitz called “Everything You Know Is Pong.”

According to the BoingBoing post, “Atari didn’t have the patent on the technology and very quickly the vast majority in the machines eating quarters around the country were knock-offs. Of course, Pong itself was ‘inspired’ by an electronic ping pong game that was in the Magnavox Odyssey home system.” Check out BoingBoing’s cool gallery of Pong knockoffs called Sons of Pong, including this ad for the Elepong from video-game manufacturer Taito.