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Yes, Pong was virtually a genre. Space Invaders was a year away and the second wave coin-op video game boom hadn't really taken off yet. Even the beloved Atar

Yes, Pong was virtually a genre. Space Invaders was a year away and the second wave coin-op video game boom hadn't really taken off yet. Even the beloved Atari 2600 wasn't on the market. Almost every game out there was some form of "block moving around the screen with player-controlled widgets hitting or missing it". The Apple ][ also came with a Breakout game, another block-on-block thing (Wozniak codesigned the Atari coin-op version, the Apple ][ was his logical next-step of turning Breakout from a fixed hardware design into a generic game-playing machine) Take a look at the Odyssey 1 (1973) and you'll see what I'm talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2EIsnr_cv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2EIsnr_cv4

DonHopkins 7y ago
OMG I love the screen overlays! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLGBtkKPj2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLGBtkKPj2U "After you've learned the basics of the game, you can increase the challenge of Odyssey Tennis by increasing or decreasing the speed of the tennis ball with the special speed control on the back of the master unit. And when you want to razzle-dazzle your opponent into submission, a special English control that fits inside the horizontal knob will make that tennis ball do everything but stand up and talk!" [Zany razzle-dazzle music and happy kid wearing razzle-dazzle shirt.]