Al Alcorn talks about creating Pong at Atari in 1972

[philena30]

Wow... it took 3mths to make Pong!

[JDoucette]

@philena30 I know, insane, huh? He had to worry about drawing the score numbers efficiently. Today, you can literally make Pong in XNA Game Studio in under 30 minutes, assuming you already know how to use it, which is an unfair comparison since Al was doing something new, not something that was already done, and of course, the obvious that software and hardware technologies have progressed slightly in these past 40 years. ;)

[ganados0]

translation: "Falter so I can get my foot back in"

[JDoucette]

@ganados0 Please show some respect. Everything progresses, and we build upon our forefathers. These guys took a risk to make a coin-operator arcade game that didn't exist. In 1984 the video game industry crashed, which shows it wasn't so obvious that these things were going to do well. We all build on the technologies in software and hardware from our past, and learn from their mistakes, and improve. Al is one of the reasons I learned BASIC as a kid on a home computer and make games today.

[ECMIM]

Great vid--thanks for posting.