PONGS

Taking as its point of departure PONG, the arcade paddle-and-ball sensation that ushered in the era of video gaming in a big way, PONGS pluralises it, ushering it from being a game where one player tries to use their paddle to bounce a ball past the other player's paddle, to being a whole family of games. These range from a very traditional presentation to tweaked adjustments in the behaviour of the ball, paddle, score and centre line, to outright mash-ups with other games such as Breakout, Tetris or Tennis for Two. Some of the variants incorporate influences from other game genres, such as edutainment PONG (which halts gameplay for pop quiz questions) and quick-time events in QTE PONG, while others incorporate modern advances in gameplay such as the achievements in Awards PONG. The screen flickers in Epilepsy PONG; balls multiply on contact in Fertility PONG. Prisoner PONG is played alone, together, the centre line an impassable barrier. Memories of PONG replays the previous round in the background while current play proceeds in the foreground. And so on and so forth, through 36 variations.