Was anyone here still playing PONG in the early 80s or later?

[mbd30]

Were you still playing pong consoles in the 80s?

 

I was born in the late 70s and I've never even seen a pong console in person except maybe for sale at swap meets and thrift stores. It seems like they were hugely popular for a little while and then quickly disappeared as soon as better alternatives were available.

[VectorGamer]

No. I didn't even know Pong consoles existed at the time they were released. Maybe they didn't advertise during Saturday morning cartoons? I learned of the VCS from seeing an Atari TV commercial for Space Invaders.

[CatPix]

I was born in 1988 and it's the first console I played. So that would have been in 1992 or 1993.

It was not new of course (although I remember browsing through old mail-order catalog and at least in 1988 they offered a very generic Pong system for more than XXX Francs of order), my parents probably bough it for my great brother who was born in 1982.

Other people of my generation... I'm not sure; but people born in the erly 80's did played with Pong so there were lots of them still in use in the mid 80's. And given the TONS I see for sale, even still in garage sales, makes me think that at some point they were so inexpensive that people bought them as a very entry-level console or as a second console for themselves and their kids.

[NE146]

I mean.. our first console was the Coleco Telstar Colortron, and it was awesome fun. Although it took two 9volt batteries (one for video, and one for sound) and when they got weak we usually only put the one in for video so I got used to it without sound

 

However I don't recall the exact years we had it.. My guess is it was the very late 70's... probably 1978 - 1979? I WILL say that once we got our Sears Atari unit with Space Invaders, we pretty much never looked back at it.

 

[+save2600]

Yes, we had a Radio Shack TV Scoreboard that we enjoyed for some time. Even after we got a VCS, it was quite a while before it was totally shelved. Also had a relative that had an arcade cocktail table version of Pong, so we'd play that whenever we visited her all through the 80's. Pong was and still is, never far out of reach.

[mr_me]

We also had the radio shack colour tv scoreboard up until we got the intellivision in 1982. I think we sold it in a flea market fund raiser that spring/summer.

[pacman000]

Someone must have; a couple of companies were still producing PONG units: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/year.asp?st=3&y=1983 (Assuming Old-Computers.com's museum is accurate.)

Edited March 26, 2019 by pacman000

[Ransom]

The only pong console we had was the Telstar Arcade, but my parents bought that for me in 1978. That was fun for about six months, but then the variations on the pong, driving, and shooting games lost their appeal.

[Flojomojo]

Space Invaders and Asteroids wiped any desire for PONG from my feeble little mind. Besides, we had Breakout, which was better.

[+wongojack]

I was born in '76, but my brother was born in '66. With two sons in that range, our house SHOULD have had a pong system, but alas, we did not. My first gaming memories are of the VCS and while my brother has some earlier memories, none are of a home pong console.

[+save2600]

I was born in '76, but my brother was born in '66. With two sons in that range, our house SHOULD have had a pong system, but alas, we did not. My first gaming memories are of the VCS and while my brother has some earlier memories, none are of a home pong console.

Did you guys at least have Video Olympics for the VCS or did you skip the whole Pong thing altogether?

[+wongojack]

We didn't have Video Olympics either. Although, my brother's best friend had a connection to get EPRoms burned, so he would come over and I would be in the room with them occasionally playing tons of games that we didn't actually own. I know that I SAW pong back then, but I never actually owned and played that game as any kind of family ritual.

[NE146]

I never had video Olympics either, Ive always looked at it in recent years and I thought man I wouldve really liked cart had I got it early on, right after my pong console

[Laner]

I was born in '72. My aunt gave me her old Radio Shack TV Pong not long after I got my 2600 for Christmas - within a year or so. That would've been '80 or '81. I recall playing it a bit, but it didn't make much of an impression compared to the Atari.

 

Of course, now I've put a Radio Shack TV Scoreboard on my eBay watch list... thanks

Edited March 26, 2019 by Laner

[Eltigro]

I was born in '74 and remember playing a pong clone when I was very young. I don't remember the year, though. I do remember what house it was, though, so my older sisters or mom might be able to help me figure out the year... I don't remember playing it when not in that house, though. We may have gotten a 2600 before we moved, but again, it's all fuzzy. There's a good chance it was still just the late 70's.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Like the poster above I was also born in '74. I don't recall Pong commercials or really remember seeing Pong systems on display, but at that time I would have been too young for the most part to really care about it. I do remember when I was about 4 or 5 and I found an old yellow colored pong type thing in the hallway closet. I kinda knew what is was for some reason so I must have seen or played a pong console before. Anyway, I pulled it out of the closet after using a dining room chair to reach the box it was in and figured out how to connect it to the TV using a butter knife as a screwdriver. (ruined that butter knife too...).

 

My mom came home from where ever she had been to find me playing Racquetball on an Odyssey 300. She was quite surprised and thought it was broken for some reason.

 

Anyway, I played on that a bit but we moved from that apartment not too long after and eventually moved into a house. By this time my mom and my step-dad had friends with Atari VCSes in their homes and I would play on those any chance I got! Eventually I would get my own 4 switch 2600 in Christmas '82. Never looked at or touched or even noticed a pong type console after that until I got back into collecting in the late '90s early 2000's.

Edited March 26, 2019 by -^Cro§Bow^-

[Tanooki]

Into the 90s I was using my moms old Fairchild channel f2 on a spare garage tv. Id still have it if my dad didnt get jerky and throw it out sometime around a decade ago. Goddamned shame had nearly every game for it everything was complete in the box too systme included. I took care of it.

[MrMaddog]

I remember I was starting kindergarden in 1980 and when my mom worked she would take me over to her neighbor to watch me till it's time to get on the school bus. Her son who was much older than me and his friend had a Pong type system (don't know the type, sorry) and I watched them play it. The way the square ball bounced back and forth leaving a trail of light fascinated me and I couldn't believe it was on the same black & white TV used for watching reruns of MASH.

 

That was when I really wanted to play video games which I never got to till my seventh birthday. Oh and a couple years later that same kid got an Atari of course...

[Zookeeper]

My parents bought me a pong clone around 82 or so. Fun little system, though my 2600 got most of the playtime.

[Lord Innit]

In 1983 I bought a Binatone Pong console for my brother and sisters. Somehow my old man got the most use out of it. Well, until he saw Donkey Kong on my Colecovision that is. After that there was no going back.

[0078265317]

I was born in '76, but my brother was born in '66. With two sons in that range, our house SHOULD have had a pong system, but alas, we did not. My first gaming memories are of the VCS and while my brother has some earlier memories, none are of a home pong console.

I was born in 76 also. Never had a pong unit either.

[jaybird3rd]

I'm surprised at the number of people who were kids in the late 70s and early 80s who never had a Pong system. Our family went through a few of them in those years: I seem to recall that we had an Atari Super PONG for a short while, and we also had an "S Four Thousand," a Radofin-designed console sold by K-mart. I believe it was based on the same GI 8500 chip that many dedicated Pong consoles used, so it was unremarkable except that it used slide potentiometers on the controllers instead of the traditional knob. I remember getting the most play time out of that one, probably just because of the novelty of the controls. We got an Odyssey² around the same time, and subsequently an Atari 2600, and the Pong consoles coexisted with them for a while. Later, I picked up an Atari Pinball, and more recently an Atari Ultra PONG, but of course by that time they were mainly collector's items.

[xybot67]

My best friend had a pong clone system in the mid 70s and we had a blast with it, it also came equipped with a rifle light gun attachment where you had to hit a moving block. I eventually was given an Atari with Space Invaders in the late 70s and we never touched his system again.

[atarilovesyou]

I had read about Pong when I was a kid but never actually played it until I tried a Coleco Telstar. That was...1985 or 86. We were big on Colecovision at the time but loved all games. I wasn't a huge fan but would love to find a nice working unit to revisit. It had three games, one was a one player Handball game. The paddles never seemed to jitter, either.

[+Atari_Warlord]

We had the Coleco Pong/Gun unit. Once I bought an Atari 2600, it never got played again. We did play the Video Olympics cart quite a bit though.