Pong

About

As of 2026, it's 54 years old.

Pong is where video games begin, and it begins about as humbly as possible: two white lines, a square 'ball,' and a score, somehow adding up to a cultural revolution in 1972. Atari built it as a training exercise for a new engineer and accidentally launched an entire industry.

The legend goes that the original arcade prototype broke down because its coin box had physically overflowed with quarters — the single most encouraging malfunction in business history.

By today's standards it's almost nothing: two paddles and a dot. But that's exactly the point. Pong proved that a screen and a little competition were enough to hypnotize a room, and everything else followed.