Anyone for Tennis?
Pong is a table tennis–themed 'twitch' arcade 'sports' video game, manufactured by Atari and originally released in 1972. It was one of the earliest arcade video games. The game was based on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. Later, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement. Pong was the first commercially successful video game, and it helped to establish the video game industry.
A version of pong is included in the ZX Spectrum +2 manual as a basic listing. It was the first program I ever typed into my Speccy, when I was about 10. I clearly remember not understating how the printed characters in the listing became UDGs after the program was run for the first time.
However, the game was pretty underwhelming as I recall. So I had a great deal of trepidation about a version of game landing in my inbox.
Salvador Camacho, in his own words:Hi.
I send you a game for ZX81 for the contest.
It is a single player smart pong. You will understand when you try it.
Good bye.
Back to my review
One thing I have noticed about ZX81 game creators... The game is always accompanied by the briefest of email. But that's OK, I like the game to do all the talking.
And talk it did.
Written in C, and I'm sure compiled using Z88DK, the game is surprisingly smooth and fast. This is not the slow, plodding basic listing I was expecting. Its fast frantic fun with responsive controls. At this point I was thinking that I Pong was very good indeed. The ball gets faster the longer rally goes on which adds something fresh to the 50year old formula.
HOWEVER
I soon noticed that I wasn't doing very well. In fact, the CPU player had not missed a shot. The game went on, and the computer racked up the points, and it NEVER missed.
I thought back to Salvador's words:
"You will understand when you try it."
Aye, there's the rub.
So this game is impossible. That stops the fun considerably. This is a shame, because otherwise the game is great. I'm impressed with what the Z81 is capable of.
There is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel though. Salvador has included the listing for the game. Sadly I have no time to identify the AL code and mod it. And I don't have time to try to do something really crazy like compile it for the Z88. However, the game is definitely worth a try, and a look at the code. If you can make the game a little fairer, please let me know.
Final thoughts
What does the 'I' in 'I Pong' stand for? I assume 'Impossible'
Its crap but its good crap. Try it
here.
"High Score -66" Chortle.
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