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Moritz Waldemeyer crafts LED-based Pong / roulette tables
We've always said, the more Pong the better, so we're the last folks you'll find knocking Moritz Waldemeyer for upping the ante (quite literally) on the previous iterations. Utilizing a fancy Corian-based table, the savvy designer incorporated a series of "LEDs and touchpad sensors" into the otherwise plainly-styled piece of furniture in order to provide a fresh rendition of a heralded classic. Pushing the technology a bit further, he also crafted a LED-based roulette table, which sports an electroluminescent map and an overhead lamp that work in conjunction to provide the rolling ball action casino dwellers know and love. While there's no official word on when these will land in Harrah's (or ultra-mod game rooms), both designs were recently showcased at the Rabih Hage Gallery in London, and we're told "white 28" was the hot ticket on table number two (pictured after the jump).[Via Techie Diva]
Get your gift on: game scarves
Bits to die for wants all your holiday money to belong to them. Check out their series of scarves featuring old school game images in knitted Italian wool. Swanky game gear that'll keep out the chill and still let people know you're a gamer.Our favorite is the pong scarf, but these are also perfect for the sidescrollers. We'd like to see one complete with tips and secret areas. Whip it off to get past a boss, and then wrap yourself back up.Black Friday is approaching quickly, check out Joystiq for more gift ideas as we march towards shopper meltdown.
UWink: Chuck E. Cheese for adults
G4's Feed blog brings us some pictures and thoughts on uWink, the "media bistro" that opened Monday in Woodland Hills, CA after months of planning. The restaurant/gaming parlor comes from the mind of Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, creator of Pong and, later, the man behind the Chuck E. Cheese chain of arcades/pizza parlors.Alissa Bushnell, Nolan's daughter, says the bistro is geared towards adults and women, with casual games that take two or three minutes to play built in to every table. Buying food and drinks from touch-screen menus earns patrons play time on the games games, from trivia contests to Pong clones.Three more locations are planned for southern California soon, and the company hopes to expand nationwide in the coming months, meaning you mights be Winking pretty soon. Eh? Eh? Thank you, I'll be here all week.
New 2.80 homebrew: Pong
It only feels like yesterday when we were taking advantage of the libtiff exploit on firmware 2.80 to play Tetris. (It was just three days ago.) Well, it appears that the amazingly talented homebrew community has come up with yet another relatively simple game to run on our systems: Pong. Although these games aren't complex, the utter simplicity of installing and launching these programs has made homebrew so much more attractive to me as of late. Simply download the program [WinRAR required], extract it into your PSP's PHOTO directory, and then launch the program by going to the PHOTOS area of your XMB.If you encounter any problems, try pressing START instead of X when trying to launch the game.[Via PSP3D]
Pong gets all dressed up at German art exhibit
Ah, Pong. Not quite the first arcade game, it has still been an inspiration for whole generations of game players and creators. Now it's the focus of an exhibit being put on by Berlin's Computer Game Museum.Pong.mythos was created as "the world's first comprehensive overview of all relevant manifestations of a major founding myth of our digital society," according to their web site. To this end, they've collected various versions of Pong ranging from building-sized to penny-sized, using media such as cockroaches and sound, played on the floor, on a dress (pictured), on a bike, and more. Pretty cool, but we're still waiting for the solar-system sized version that uses Pluto as a ball and Mars and Earth as the paddles.[Thanks Jibaro009]
Pong Dress: Play your favorite old-skool game on a person
The Pong Dress, created by a pair of Austrian artists, smacks of something that their German-speaking bretheren at the Chaos Computer Club might concoct -- but the Vienna-based Ludic Society beat 'em to it. Max Moswitzer and Margarete Jahrmann combined a dress with a 5 x 7 inch screen to play a a game of Pong on the wearer's body. The joysticks are quite the coup de grâce, however: dueling old-skool NES controllers, plugged in at hip level. How do you keep track of the score, you ask? The scoreboard can be found chest-high. (Don't blame us, we didn't design it.) The dress is now on display at the Pong Mythos exhibition in Leipzig, Germany -- we assume with Moswitzer wearing a stuffed bra to go with it.[Via networked_performance]
Roddick takes on Pong in ad
It seems Madison Avenue is increasingly looking to video games for inspiration. First we see the world of Grand Theft auto transformed by a coke, and today we stumble across an ad for American Express that pits Andy Roddick against the paddle from Pong. The tennis pro has some trouble getting the ball past the massive white rectangle that covers nearly half the width of the court, but ends up besting the eponymous paddle with some ingenuity.The whole thing kind of reminded us of this recent piece on universally accessible games, which featured an example of a 3D player-model taking on a simplified Pong game. Is the American Express ad department reading Joystiq for ideas? Probably not... but just in case, we're still waiting for the ad in which Mario has to spend his hard-earned coins on late fees and ballooning interest payments.
The LED Pong hat
If for some reason you feel the need to sport a set of obnoxious LED displays on your head, you might as well go all out and embed them in the ugliest hat you can find. Iain over at LushProjects is one person who felt such a need, and spent over six months designing and building the, um, unique piece of headwear you see pictured above -- which besides displaying the text message of your choice, also throws down a pretty mean game of Pong or simulated Space Invaders. To liven things up a bit, Iain even tossed in a microphone and amp, so that fellow concert-goers need only glance over at his creation for a graphical representation of the music blasting at a show. We're not sure if the hat actually lets you play a real game of Pong or not, but even if it does, having strangers stand inches from our face while tugging on our ear flaps doesn't sound all that appealing - we'll stick with our Pong clock for now, thanks.[Via Make and Hack-A-Day]
Virtua Tennis 3 trailer now viewable
Serve up an ace with this new Virtua Tennis 3 trailer to get a feel for the next-gen volley action. Sega is pulling out the stops on this judging from the video (it's like Pong on steroids!). Slated for PS3 as well as Xbox 360, Virtua Tennis 3 is going to be hitting the courts in the spring of '07.
Gaming in West Africa: Only 7 years behind
To cut a long story short and to create a forced feeling of mystery and intrigue, I'll simply point out that, on my way back home from E3 last week, I was stranded for 24 hours in Senegal, a quaint little country situated in Western Africa. And by "quaint little country", I really mean a place that technology actively flees from in blind terror. When my laptop attempted to find an active Wi-Fi hotspot, canned laughter could be heard emanating from somewhere in the universe. And so, with Guitar Hero controller strapped to my back (simultaneously a piece of carry-on luggage and a bold image), I began to explore the vast and largely undeveloped wasteland that was the country's...airport building. Leave it to a gaming nerd to find a store selling games in such an obscure place. Judging by the veritable cornucopia of new releases lining the shelves, the country's gaming scene is sure to take off. Some of the games burning up the Senegalese sales charts include: Fifa '99 (don't worry, it plays the same as this year's version) Shadow Warrior Star Wars: Behind the Magic (which isn't even a game) Pong I would have taken the time to pre-order a Sega Saturn at the counter, but the French language barrier proved to be insurmountable. I'll be better prepared next time I get stranded here.
Let's get physical with Pongmechanik
First mind-controlled, now electromechanically-controlled. Where will Pong be next? The creator, Niklas Roy, writes, "Pongmechanik is an absolutely physical game. The game is realized electromechanically, and essentially consists of four elements: A relay computer, the mechanical movement with collision detection, the display and the acoustic components."Check out those screenshots, and those gameplay videos! Those graphics are incredible! They look so... real.[Via MAKE: Blog]
Mind-controlled PONG featured at CeBIT
Brain-computer interfaces hold enormous promise for perfecting prosthetics, assisting quadriplegics, and improving vehicle safety. So what's the first application shown off at the CeBIT 2006 show? A way of playing (and losing) a game of PONG... with - your - mind.Sure, you could also check out a typing application that's still in the pre-beta-alpha stage below (man, typing on a post on that would take... a very long time), but playing an ancient arcade game with no hands seems like a more entertaining proposition at this point.See also: The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface from Dr. Klaus-Robert Müller A short video clip of that brain-typing application A look back at Joystiq posts featuring the word "PONG" 5.46 GHz PC shown at CeBIT Japanese doctors recommend Brain Training for seniors
More on Grand Theft Ping Pong
A lot of people are convinced that Rockstar Presents Table Tennis is some sort of early April Fools prank, but Tommy Vercetti & Co. don't seem to be in on the joke. Totally360 got a hold of some previously unseen screenshots that show off Grand Theft Ping Pong's graphical prowess, if not its Rockstar attitude. I'll be damned—they also have a case cover shot. Maybe table tennis really is the sport of cocaine kings.[See also: Has Rockstar gone soft?]
Pong gets its MMO groove on
Billed as "massively multiplayer Pong", this Flash interpretation of the all-time classic falls more into the "collaborative" than the "MMO" category. You are randomly assigned to a side--red or blue--and have to work with other players to play an otherwise normal game of Pong.Interestingly, the game is difficult to sabotage, thanks to the presence of other players and the clear, universal common goal. Bow down to the hive mind, mortals.[Thanks, Tim]
Migraine-inducing miniature arcade games
Retro-gaming blog Re:Retro sent us word of some tiny arcade games weighing in at an outrageous 18x18 pixels square. The miniature version of Pong, featuring paddles that are 3 pixels high and a ball that's a single, solitary pixel, is still (amazingly) playable. Unfortunately, it's also likely to make your head pound after about five minutes.The site also has versions of Pac Man, Asteroids, and Space Invaders... all of which are guaranteed to make your eyes bleed!
Pong clocks; real vs. widget
We missed the news that the swoon-inducing "Pong clock" is actually for sale! At $240, it's a bit more expensive than an Atari Flashback, but oh so worth it!If you just want the Pong time-keeping functionality, but don't care about the aesthetics, you can download the free "pongClock" widget for Apple's Dashboard. The widget uses the score to keep time for you and you have the option to play a match against it. Oh, Pong, where will you be next?
