Videogame Review, PONG for the Atari VCS 800 (w/ Classic Joystick)
PONG is a legend. You know this! People even think it’s better than old video games elsewhere. Maybe it’s because PONG is so simple, so basic, so minimal, so black & white, so vintage, so retro, so old-fashioned and wrong, that it sparks their interest for “the good old days”. The Atari VCS (or, Atari VCS 800) is a modern PC gaming machine with a design for people who are on a budget. You can play PONG on your computer. A PC gaming machine is very useful for PONG. You just have to find the right controller and I believe Atari’s modern design for their Classic Joystick fits the bill. I have a few complaints. Keep in mind that a PC gaming machine does have “those moments” with bugs and errors; however, PONG is such a short game that you’ll hardly notice anything, if at all. Sometimes my “white line” gets off-track and I have to twist my joystick a little to return back to normal. This is a problem you might have with Microsoft Word or any modern Pages on Apple’s MacBook Air. Indeed, by modern standards, PONG wouldn’t be even considered really a game, but just a blank screen with 3 character types: 2 white bars, and, 1 white dot. The “white dot” is like your tennis ball and the “white bars” are like tennis rackets. PONG is a metaphor as well as a reality. The Gallery images and pictures of Atari’s original PONG arcade machine are wonderful to look at and serve as a reminder of the legend that is PONG. Arcade machines “back in the day” were limited in terms of electronics within the range of separated items. What do I mean by “separated items” you ask? What I mean is this. Back in the day, if we’re to look at the past and study video game history, video game companies and programmers were able to invent new modern technology with better graphics, better controls, and better programs. PONG would be more like a basic program today. Arcade machines were released. However, there was a serious problem, and it’s a problem that still exists today. When a new video game machine is made, programmers often have to “abandon” old technology to keep their new video game machine running and working without any hiccups. For example, PONG was made for the Sega Genesis, a future video game console for the 1990’s; but, it was terrible. For a long time, only “the PONG machine” from the arcade was the best PONG. Now we have PONG for the Atari VCS. The arcade game classic seems to be here in all its glory. Ignore the “Hardest” difficulty level. Serving the ball in Hardest difficulty mode is too tricky to be fun and the computer appears to read my mind. The best difficulty mode for PONG is between Standard and Hard. The computer is very smart for “an old guy”. I’m new to PONG. I’m a young man with little to no experience for PONG. It’s a challenging game and moving my tennis racket is fun! Do you know what’s great about all this? Not only can I use Atari’s modern joystick for PONG, but I can still use Atari’s modern joystick for hundreds of other modern video games, too. This includes any of Atari’s PC games for my Atari VCS 800, as long as the joystick works; and, as another controller option, I can use Atari’s Xbox-style controller for other video games on the video game console. I do not use Atari’s Xbox-style controller for PONG and it’s their “classic joystick” that works for PONG. I do not play with other, local video game gamers anymore. Just give me a computer, a controller, automatic difficulty and I’m all set! I’ve wanted to play PONG for years, for real, and with time. Now I can!
https://www.deviantart.com/gameuniverso/art/Review-of-PONG-Atari-VCS-800-884495006
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