Pong

How to play

You control the left paddle; the computer controls the right one. Move your paddle with the mouse, your finger on a touchscreen, or the up/down arrow keys, and press Space, click, or tap to serve. Where the ball strikes your paddle determines the angle it comes back at — hitting it near the edge sends it off at a sharp angle, while hitting it dead center sends it back nearly straight, and every bounce off a paddle nudges the ball's speed up slightly. First player to reach 7 points wins the match. Pick Easy, Normal, or Hard from the difficulty menu before starting a new match to raise or lower the cap on how fast the CPU paddle can move to track the ball.

Frequently asked questions

Is my score or match history saved?

No — nothing is saved between visits. The score resets to 0-0 every time you press "New match" or reload the page, and there's no local storage or account behind this game, so there's no running tally of wins to check later and no way to see how many matches you've played. If you want to remember a result, you'll need to note it yourself before starting the next match.

How does the computer opponent work?

The CPU paddle simply tracks the ball's vertical position, moving toward it every frame at a speed capped by the difficulty you choose — Easy is slow enough to beat with basic shots, Hard moves fast enough that it rarely misses a straight return. Because its speed is capped rather than instant, you can beat even Hard by aiming sharp diagonal shots off the edge of your paddle that it can't cover in time.

Why is Pong famous?

Atari released Pong in 1972, and it's widely credited as the first commercially successful video game, helping launch the entire arcade and home console industry that followed. The original arcade cabinet's coin box famously jammed within its first days in a Sunnyvale bar because it filled up with quarters faster than anyone at Atari expected a simple two-paddle game to earn, forcing an emergency redesign of the cabinet.