Atari Challenges You to a New Pong Game

[CommanderFrank]

The game is you design a new Pong App for the App Store and Atari pays you a bunch of money. Sounds like a fun game doesn’t it? The challenge lasts until April 15th, so you had better get developing if you want in on the big bucks.

The judges for the contest include Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, who came up with the original idea for Pong - a game with two bats and a square ball.

 

[GruntUltra]

IMO the new Pong game was released in 1977 (just not as an app). It was COMBAT. Playing Tank-Pong with shells that bounced off walls or flying the biplanes with guided bullets - that was a killer game back in the day! Make an app for that.

 

[TheGeekFreek]

It better be like mortal wombat

 

[Ur_Mom]

IMO the new Pong game was released in 1977 (just not as an app). It was COMBAT. Playing Tank-Pong with shells that bounced off walls or flying the biplanes with guided bullets - that was a killer game back in the day! Make an app for that.

Most of those games of that era were based on Pong. Very easy to make, just add additional graphics. There were a lot of Pong based games for the longest time (in gaming years) and people played them as new games, even though they were pretty much the same thing, just a different overlay or color.

 

[WBurchnall]

I'd love to see someone make a simple twist on the new idea and win it that way. I'm thinking an iPhone app that connects 4 people together randomly through some kind of match-making system and there's 4 paddles on the screen. One on top, left, right, bottom. The ball can't touch your 'edge' or you 'lose'. So if your bottom, and the ball touches the bottom corner -- game over. Thus instead of 1vs1 like the original pong its 1vs1vs1vs1.

To make the game a bit quicker so ppl don't drop out before its over, I'd recommend making the ball bounce a tiny bit like 5% faster after each success bounce against a paddle. You could add some other fun-features too like every 60s you rotate clockwise. So your now defending left instead of bottom. So you could try to place your paddle in a bad position to screw your opponent at the end of 60s. Thus making a bit of cut-throat, but time your screwing-over-your opponent wrong and you'd get knocked out when the ball touches the edge.

 

[moteasah]

I'd love to see someone make a simple twist on the new idea and win it that way. I'm thinking an iPhone app that connects 4 people together randomly through some kind of match-making system and there's 4 paddles on the screen. One on top, left, right, bottom. The ball can't touch your 'edge' or you 'lose'. So if your bottom, and the ball touches the bottom corner -- game over. Thus instead of 1vs1 like the original pong its 1vs1vs1vs1.

To make the game a bit quicker so ppl don't drop out before its over, I'd recommend making the ball bounce a tiny bit like 5% faster after each success bounce against a paddle. You could add some other fun-features too like every 60s you rotate clockwise. So your now defending left instead of bottom. So you could try to place your paddle in a bad position to screw your opponent at the end of 60s. Thus making a bit of cut-throat, but time your screwing-over-your opponent wrong and you'd get knocked out when the ball touches the edge.

Great idea except its impossible to do with latency. Especially over 3g

 

[Stone Cold]

Hey everyone, I'll PAY YOU $100,000 to design a new app for me to sell!

Fine print: Payout is only after I earn $200,000 profit from the the app you created. And, I do accounting Hollywood style, which means I'll never officially turn a profit, no matter how much money I get.

 

[bloodypulp]

Arkanoid series is the best "pong-style" game.