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The Atari Pong's must have been a west coast thing because I never saw any. The first one I remember was an odyssey a friend had. His parents paid so much money for this thing and it seemed like it was missing so much compared to the arcade machine. It didn't have lines on the screen for the top and bottom. It had overlays you put on the screen. And a hockey version again with overlays. And it did not keep score for you. You had two little sliders next to your control knobs. And it didn't auto serve. You had to push the serve button. I hope this is a real description I am remembering. Someone please tell me if I am wrong or right remembering this ancient Magnavox The first pong my sister and I had was a Coleco telstar with the gun. It kept score and it auto served. At the time I had a collection of handheld Mattel games. Having something that played on the TV was a luxury in itself. Currently I have one pong unit. It's a Roberts Sportrama 8. It's a color pong. Made well after the Atari 2600 came out. It has proportional joysticks and a really cool foosball game. It's amazing the impact these things had. All because it was the first time you had control of something on your TV. VCR's were still a few years off for most people. Which brings me to the eternal question. Why do some people refer to video game cartridges as TAPES? Is it the 8 track cartridge which is really a tape thing? Is it the language thing where cassette and cartridge are the same thing? I remember thinking the first time I saw an Atari cartridge that it was a mini 8track. Still to this day well past the year 2000 you are still likely to hear someone say they have Atari tapes in their attic or basement.
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