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I never saw Pong in the wild, but played a lot of early games and home games. A few years ago so guys at work were playing Mario Tennus on a Nintendo Switch. I

I never saw Pong in the wild, but played a lot of early games and home games. A few years ago so guys at work were playing Mario Tennus on a Nintendo Switch. I tried it a few minutes and said "it's Pong" and was done. Fancy graphics and special moves (like Mortal Kombat) added to Pong did nothing for me. In fact special moves never appealed to me as I prefer skill to memorization, but that's just a preference. Anyway, Mario Tennis is just Pong but some people like it.

revolvingocelot 4y ago
Downvoting on HN is many things at once, but I hope the above comment remains readable. Beliefs like the one above are important because they help define the conceptual edges of categories, which cannot be surmounted and overcome until well-understood. Some might say, not unreasonably, that there's skill in applying/countering special moves in a similar way to countering some unexpected bankshot in Pong; those people are working from the more modern category of "asymmetrical character selection"-based videogaming. IMO the claim that Mario Tennis is Pong is verifiably correct, and it's also obviously wrong. Dropbox, as the infamous comment goes, "really is" "just" filesharing and -mirroring, scaled up -- and Dropbox is also something different than really flashy WebDAV.
toast0 4y ago
> Fancy graphics and special moves (like Mortal Kombat) added to Pong did nothing for me. Have you tried Pong Kombat [1], there's minutes of potential fun there. It may be your perfect blend of anti-fun though. [1] https://archive.org/details/PONGKOMB https://archive.org/details/PONGKOMB
doix 4y ago
Mario Tennis (the Switch version at least, Mario Tennis 64 is closer to pong) is mostly a resource/meter management game in my eyes. The ball going back and forth and where it lands doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things, it's almost secondary. It's more about knowing when to spend meter to score points/defend. > In fact special moves never appealed to me as I prefer skill to memorization, but that's just a preference. There's no memorization in Mario Tennis, is there? It's 4 possible moves or something, all tied to specific buttons. Also, FWIW, the skill in fighting games is knowing when to use special moves, not memorizing them. Anyone that has invested even a tiny amount of time getting good at a fighting game has memorized all the inputs/combos, that is not the challenging aspect of fighting games.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Also, FWIW, the skill in fighting games is knowing when to use special moves, not memorizing them. Anyone that has invested even a tiny amount of time getting good at a fighting game has memorized all the inputs/combos, that is not the challenging aspect of fighting games. A prerequisite to using them is memorizing them. You said it yourself right there. Not my thing, that's all.
anikom15 4y ago
Would you consider Tennis for the Famicom to be Pong? It’s quite different. For one, the ball follows a path that resembles tennis, as opposed to bouncing off walls. The ball moves in a 3D area, and the player can move in a 2D area.

revolvingocelot 4y ago

Downvoting on HN is many things at once, but I hope the above comment remains readable. Beliefs like the one above are important because they help define the conceptual edges of categories, which cannot be surmounted and overcome until well-understood. Some might say, not unreasonably, that there's skill in applying/countering special moves in a similar way to countering some unexpected bankshot in Pong; those people are working from the more modern category of "asymmetrical character selection"-based videogaming. IMO the claim that Mario Tennis is Pong is verifiably correct, and it's also obviously wrong. Dropbox, as the infamous comment goes, "really is" "just" filesharing and -mirroring, scaled up -- and Dropbox is also something different than really flashy WebDAV.

toast0 4y ago

> Fancy graphics and special moves (like Mortal Kombat) added to Pong did nothing for me. Have you tried Pong Kombat [1], there's minutes of potential fun there. It may be your perfect blend of anti-fun though. [1] https://archive.org/details/PONGKOMB https://archive.org/details/PONGKOMB

doix 4y ago

Mario Tennis (the Switch version at least, Mario Tennis 64 is closer to pong) is mostly a resource/meter management game in my eyes. The ball going back and forth and where it lands doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things, it's almost secondary. It's more about knowing when to spend meter to score points/defend. > In fact special moves never appealed to me as I prefer skill to memorization, but that's just a preference. There's no memorization in Mario Tennis, is there? It's 4 possible moves or something, all tied to specific buttons. Also, FWIW, the skill in fighting games is knowing when to use special moves, not memorizing them. Anyone that has invested even a tiny amount of time getting good at a fighting game has memorized all the inputs/combos, that is not the challenging aspect of fighting games.

phkahler 4y ago
>> Also, FWIW, the skill in fighting games is knowing when to use special moves, not memorizing them. Anyone that has invested even a tiny amount of time getting good at a fighting game has memorized all the inputs/combos, that is not the challenging aspect of fighting games. A prerequisite to using them is memorizing them. You said it yourself right there. Not my thing, that's all.

anikom15 4y ago

Would you consider Tennis for the Famicom to be Pong? It’s quite different. For one, the ball follows a path that resembles tennis, as opposed to bouncing off walls. The ball moves in a 3D area, and the player can move in a 2D area.