Atari Pong Arcade up on Ebay...

[Curt Vendel]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...bayphotohosting

[dcsutherland]

Living in the inland empire around 1984 I was 16 years old and visiting Balboa Island-a beach area in Southern Calif. and I went into an arcade there. I think it was the "Bay Arcade - 706 E Bay Ave - Baboa (Newport Beach), CA". This arcade had been there forever and I think is still there. They had an old army style game and I think something like sub-hunt. The classic old arcade - a bunch of skee ball lanes. Anyway I was really shocked to see an old yellow cabinet with the PONG moniker facing the wall!

 

One of the paddle handles was missing and the game wasn't plugged in. I went to the counter to see what was what and after expressing some interest in the game at all the guy basically asked me if I wanted to just take it! I was so stoked! So the next week we came down with a truck and took it away.

 

The motherboard was a huge thing screwed to the back panel board with no apparent cpu and the display, if I remember correctly was a converted TV with cardboard around it to hide the TV parts. I think it was mfr'd missing the tuner but still had the std face-there was something weird about it. I can't remember if it worked but after a couple months we moved it to my buddy's house and put it in his basement to work on.

 

A bunch of time went by and I was pretty annoyed because my friend's dad cleaned up his house and put the game outside in the driveway. That didn't nearly piss me off as much as when a couple weeks later he decided to clean up some more and the game dissappeared to the trash dump! ARGH! He was a great friend though, so it never ended up being a sore point.