🎬 Prompt Response: Did Someone Say Pong? 😁
What was your first ever videogame?
Pong — not ping pong — was a digital form of table tennis that really took some practice to figure out. Moving your paddles quickly was difficult, but that erratic little digital tennis ball was not slow at all. Lol 😂 And I don’t know why I got so excited whenever I found out a friend had this game. Probably because we didn’t have it. I don’t think we had any kind of video games in our home. But I didn’t mind so much because I was not any good at them at all. Hand-eye coordination, depth perception, speediness: None of these were strong with me, and mostly still aren’t. Still, it was always so exciting to find out someone had the game, and everyone gathered around to watch until it was their turn.
But even without being good at them, there’s something so pleasant about remembering the amazing beginnings of technology in my young life. My sister and I had colored rocks that grew in a bowl of water with just the right mix of chemicals. (Not tech but science, so that’s its own techy/nerdy thing.) We had toy cars that ran on real gasoline. We had a doll that sat at a small desk that was attached to a larger desk, and when we would draw on our paper, she would draw the same thing in miniature on her side. Her arm and pen were connected to the pen holder on our side, so invention wins the techy vote here. Oh, and then there was Spirograph™! That was my most favorite! It’s probably the play thing that started my love of patterns and kaleidoscopes. Well, and my actual toy kaleidoscopes.
Of course, the item that looked like a TV screen with controllers that could make your “cursor” go where you wanted was Etch-A-Sketch™ and it was even portable. It didn’t even need batteries! And we could play it in the car or while the grown-ups were playing cards.
I didn’t plan on writing anything but Pong, but sometimes nostalgia takes over. Thanks for sharing my little jaunt down memory lane. I’ve posted a video of a real game of Pong below. The original game wouldn’t embed, so this one is using the double paddles, but you’ll still get the point.
Bonus: Here’s a screenshot from a closed eBay auction where someone sold a Katie Kopycat doll and her “Magic Desk.” This lets you see how the toy company took a real drafting tool called a pantograph and turned it into a child’s toy. Very cool. 🪆 🧸
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