PONG

[namedos]

Found this site recently and I remember some folks were trying to find an emulated game of Pong and it is generally not available.

Try one of these and I think you'll find have something close enough:

http://www.pong-story.com/pcpong.htm

[miles2912]

Oh man.. I know I should have planned for 2 spinner on my cab  .  Seriously though too cool and nice find.

Don

[jcrouse]

Nice piece of software, and fun, but VERY cabinet unfriendly.

John

[thebrownshow]

This has probably been addressed a million times before, but why isn't Pong in MAME?

[jcrouse]

This has probably been addressed a million times before, but why isn't Pong in MAME?

Exactly! For the 1,000,001th time it was in an earlier version and removed because it was more of a simulation than an emulation (I think).

Joh

[SirPoonga]

It uses discrete logic, meaning it is purely eletrical componants that create pong.  It doesn't use a rom with software in it.  So it isn't something that can be emulated, only simulated.

[Howard_Casto]

For the record, there was a guy that was actually working on emulating these games by literally emulating every single electrical circuit on the board. 

As you can imagine though, this made for a lot of overhead. The emulator wouldn't even run more then a few fps on the fastest of machines. 

With that being said, the guy who wrote it didn't know much about programming or game design, just electronics. 

If someone with good programming experience could get ahold of an original pong schematic and actually understand what it means, then true discrete logic emulation at a playable speed would be possible.

There has to be someone out there with such skills..... afterall you can build a pong kit in under a day so there couldnl't be a lot to  it. 

[Spartan]

So cool.  Back in the late 70's we had a couple of authentic pong cocktail tables in my living room (the big round ones).  Man, that was the bomb!   

At the time, my parents thought they could get in the business of placing these tables in bars, restaurants, etc, but it never panned out.

[Brad]

Compile Pong back into Mame. The driver is floating around or use the older version that include Pong. Just run it separately for Pong only.

Brad

[Howard_Casto]

The mame driver of pong is just guesswork.... almost any of the links on this thread are to more accurate versions of pong.

[Brad]

True but lets face it, how many times and for how long are you really going to play Pong for? I only include it for the cool factor of seeing it, not to play the awful thing 

Brad

[Howard_Casto]

True but lets face it, how many times and for how long are you really going to play Pong for? I only include it for the cool factor of seeing it, not to play the awful thing 

Brad

Exactly.  Which makes me wonder why you'd go to the trouble of finding the old pong driver, downloading old mame source, inserting the driver back into the source and compiling it when you could just download an exe and be done with it.

[Brad]

Usually due to compiling other stuff into it as well. Oh and I do like a challenge occasionally My last few compiles have been for requests but I don't have the time these days.

Brad

[danny_galaga]

There has to be someone out there with such skills..... afterall you can build a pong kit in under a day so there couldnl't be a lot to  it. 

and there in fact is your answer. build a kit and incorporate that into your cab! not sure how seemless you can make it though. might need some kinda mechanical switching device to turn off the PC signal and switch on the pong signal...

[Howard_Casto]

There has to be someone out there with such skills..... afterall you can build a pong kit in under a day so there couldn't be a lot to  it. 

and there in fact is your answer. build a kit and incorporate that into your cab! not sure how seemless you can make it though. might need some kinda mechanical switching device to turn off the PC signal and switch on the pong signal...

No that's not an answer because each kit is slightly different and plays slightly different.  Also pong kits are virtually non-existant in this day and age not to mention that it wouldn't be the arcade version.

The answer is to get detailed schematics of each discrete logic arcade game or at the very least high res scans/photos of the circuit boards.  Then they are preserved and an emulator/simulator can be built around them.  There are over 100 discrete logic games, many of which have nothing to do with pong as well as a handful of hybrid games (they have rom chips but all they store are graphics/hiscores).  Sadly nothing is being done, on the electronics end, to document and preserve these games. 


This isn't always about selfish wants like making a game playable ya know.

[daywane]

I just double checked.
mame 36 beta has pong 

[jcrouse]

I just double checked.
mame 36 beta has pong 

I believe it was in 0.36b10 and removed in 0.36b11.

John

[danny_galaga]

There has to be someone out there with such skills..... afterall you can build a pong kit in under a day so there couldn't be a lot to  it. 

and there in fact is your answer. build a kit and incorporate that into your cab! not sure how seemless you can make it though. might need some kinda mechanical switching device to turn off the PC signal and switch on the pong signal...

No that's not an answer because each kit is slightly different and plays slightly different.  Also pong kits are virtually non-existant in this day and age not to mention that it wouldn't be the arcade version.

The answer is to get detailed schematics of each discrete logic arcade game or at the very least high res scans/photos of the circuit boards.  Then they are preserved and an emulator/simulator can be built around them.  There are over 100 discrete logic games, many of which have nothing to do with pong as well as a handful of hybrid games (they have rom chips but all they store are graphics/hiscores).  Sadly nothing is being done, on the electronics end, to document and preserve these games. 


This isn't always about selfish wants like making a game playable ya know.

hehe. this is exactly what i was saying to chad a little while back regarding stunt-cycle. and i would rather someone did it for stunt-cycle than pong since i've never seen stunt-cycle but EVERYONE knows what pong looks like...

regards the pong, really to me if you wanted it the best option would be (since ther e is no genuine version around) to get the best sim you can find for pc and use a front end that can launch it as well as mame.

[thebrownshow]

For the record, there was a guy that was actually working on emulating these games by literally emulating every single electrical circuit on the board. 

As you can imagine though, this made for a lot of overhead. The emulator wouldn't even run more then a few fps on the fastest of machines. 

With that being said, the guy who wrote it didn't know much about programming or game design, just electronics. 

If someone with good programming experience could get ahold of an original pong schematic and actually understand what it means, then true discrete logic emulation at a playable speed would be possible.

There has to be someone out there with such skills..... afterall you can build a pong kit in under a day so there couldnl't be a lot to  it. 

Anybody have a schematic?  I've got guys here at work that might be able to help out with it.

[Howard_Casto]

This is the best resource for discrete games on the web:

http://www.mameworld.net/discrete/


Unfortunately there have been so many pong variants, the original pong schematics seem to have been lost to time.  There are, however, schematics to a handful of more interesting games on the site.  Games that involve more than a paddle and ball. 

[Howard_Casto]

Note:  In case it isn't obvious games that have manuals on the dl site usually have schematics on the last page.  Since these games never break completely due to their analog nature, rather they start "acting funny" the gameplay mechanics to each game are also described in extreme detail in these manuals.