Can two people play on one keyboard?

Yes, and it is the best way to play it. Player one uses W and S, player two the up and down arrows. Both paddles move at once — the game reads which keys are held rather than which was pressed last, so neither player can freeze the other out. On a phone it is one player against the machine, because two people sharing one handset is not a real option.

How do I make the ball go where I want?

Hit it with a different part of your paddle. The middle sends it back flat and the edges send it away steep, so the paddle is an aiming device rather than a wall. That one rule is most of what separates this from bouncing a dot around.

Does the machine cheat?

No, and it would be easy to. It sees exactly what you see, it moves no faster than its difficulty allows, and it does not know where the ball is going to end up — so a well-angled shot into the corner beats it. Easy, Normal and Hard change only how fast it can move and how early it starts reacting.

Is this really from 1972?

Pong is, yes — twenty years before the rest of this desk. Allan Alcorn built it at Atari as a training exercise that was never meant to ship, and it became the first commercially successful video game. Everything else in this arcade is downstream of it, which is why it is here even though it does not belong to 1992.

PLAY · OPEN SHELF

Play Pong

Two paddles, one ball, first to eleven. It runs in the browser, it costs nothing, and finishing a game pays bits into the Bit Bank.

Two players share one keyboard. On a phone, drag to move — one player only.

PRESS SPACE

0 — 0 · FIRST TO 11 · W/S · MACHINE: NORMALSPACE — STARTNO BITS YET

Contour field plate, an interference landscape banded into iso-lines, ink-soft on bone — FIG. — FROM THE MANUAL · PLACEHOLDER PLATE

How it works

Press START, or hit a key. There is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
Keyboard or touch, whichever is in front of you.
Finish a game and the bits land in the Bit Bank on the way out.

Questions, answered honestly

Can two people play on one keyboard?: Yes, and it is the best way to play it. Player one uses W and S, player two the up and down arrows. Both paddles move at once — the game reads which keys are held rather than which was pressed last, so neither player can freeze the other out. On a phone it is one player against the machine, because two people sharing one handset is not a real option.
How do I make the ball go where I want?: Hit it with a different part of your paddle. The middle sends it back flat and the edges send it away steep, so the paddle is an aiming device rather than a wall. That one rule is most of what separates this from bouncing a dot around.
Does the machine cheat?: No, and it would be easy to. It sees exactly what you see, it moves no faster than its difficulty allows, and it does not know where the ball is going to end up — so a well-angled shot into the corner beats it. Easy, Normal and Hard change only how fast it can move and how early it starts reacting.
Is this really from 1972?: Pong is, yes — twenty years before the rest of this desk. Allan Alcorn built it at Atari as a training exercise that was never meant to ship, and it became the first commercially successful video game. Everything else in this arcade is downstream of it, which is why it is here even though it does not belong to 1992.