Prepare for an Epic Pong Assault
This morning Atari announced Pong is being rebooted.
In what they hope is a cross media assault that will restore one of the first ever video games to a prominent position in the gaming landscape, a series of upcoming Pong products are set to hit our shelves and screens in 2017.
Leading the charge is a semi-reboot of the original video game, now titled The Pong. The Pong will task players with controlling the left racquet squiggle, in an origin story that follows “Lefty” from idealistic space-marine-super-soldier to tennis star. Taking what they say are the best elements from the untold story of Pong, the new game will be a cover based shooter, with meaty melee finishers.
What happens when an alien-computer-space-race, responsible for the origin of the human species, returns to clean up their wayward experiment?
Only the straight man Sargent Lefty crouches behind cover between the enemy and total extinction. Well, only Lefty and Righty, if you have a co-op buddy. These two will bounce between each other to produce a new kind of synergy on the battlefield, taking the ultimate final fight to the progenitor race.
“It’s going to kick ass!” Atari said.
And The Pong is only the start of the year of Pong, with Warner Bros working on a tent pole summer blockbuster film.
Where The Pong focuses on setting up the world, Pong War will tell the tale of a half dozen brave soldiers who recover a set of vital rules and plans for a new type of tennis, one believed to be impossible for humans to play.
Atari also confirmed that they were talking to Iain M. Banks and Isaac Asimov about novels set in the Post-Invasion-Pong-Prequel-verse.
“Pong is going to be in everyone’s face come summer 2017, and The Pong will be the first to reach your senses. I think after we’ve given everyone a taste of The Pong, it will again be a breakout hit in an otherwise depressed gaming market.”
Look for more information on The Pong, and everything Pong related, on this Medium page.
