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Hardware Hacking Entertainment Games Hardware

Mechanical Pong 256

Posted by timothy from the pronounced-the-same dept.
RotJ writes "Some crafty Germans have created an electromechanical conversion of the game Pong: "Pongmechanik is an absolutely physical game. The game is realized electromechanically, and essentially consists of four elements: A relay computer, the mechanical movement with collision detection, the display and the acoustic components." Talk about analog retro chic." saccade.com adds "This amazing device faithfully re-creates the classic original video game with pulleys, wires, motors and a (pre-chip, pre-transistor, pre-tube) relay based computer. They were partly inspired by Konrad Zuse, who created some of the first electromechanical and electronic computers."
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Mechanical Pong More

Mechanical Pong

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  • Carnival (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mirko ( 198274 )
    If they make a non-computer-based version of Carnival, it might look like what it is supposed to replace IRL :)

  • High quality mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) * on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:24AM (#10316304) Journal
    High quality mirror of the movie in case of the likely slashdotting [tamu.edu]

    It's very cool. The video is in German with English subtitles.

  • Funnily enough... (Score:3, Funny)

    by FalconZero ( 607567 ) * <FalconZero@Gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:25AM (#10316306)
    ...I'm right this minuite writing control software for a custom manufacturing
    machine about 10ft^2 with a platform driven by motors in xy
    space, and having read this article I added:

    int xdir=1; sDriveX(xdir);
    int ydir=1; sDriveY(ydir);

    while (true){
    if (stopSwX()){xdir*=-1;sDriveX(xdir);}
    if (stopSwY()){ydir*=-1;sDriveY(ydir);}
    }

    I fired it up, chuckled, then felt a bit nerdy, chuckled some more,
    then got on with my work.

  • Real life pong (Score:5, Funny)

    by riotstarter ( 650328 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:28AM (#10316312)
    Anyone ever played real life Pong before?

    I think it's called Tennis or something.
    • I played the version that was a sub-game in
      Commander Keen [3drealms.com]. I forget with episodes it was.

      But my friend went one better, and put an old herculese monitor in a box,
      added a 386 and a dial, and played pong. (Read: Far too much spare time)

      • Re:Real life pong (Score:3, Informative)

        by G-funk ( 22712 )
        It was keen dreams (keen 4) I believe.

        • Re:Real life pong (Score:2, Informative)

          by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          Keen Dreams was a spinoff that came out after 6. Keen 4 was the one where you had to recover those oraclesor sages or whattheywerecalled. Keen 4 was also the only one with the infamous dopefish.
        • I think I the minigames were in 4-6, but I'm not sure Keen Dreams had it. Its menu interface was different than Keens 4-6, and actually was nearly identical to another EGA Softdisk game, Rescue Rover.
        • The pong minigame was in Keen 4 thru 6. Six was published by a company called 'Formgen', and is thus unavailable for sale. Last I knew, you could buy Keen 1 thru 5 on cd from Apogee.

          Keen Dreams was made by id to meet a quota for a number of games, and was then dumped into being freeware or somesuch. It had a completly different interface to it, that included a mouse cursor and buttons. The plot was rather humorous, but you didn't have your neural blaster with you. So, you had to collect little flashing obj
      • Commander Keen episodes 4-6 ("Secret Of The Oracle", "The Armageddon Machine" and "Aliens Ate My Babysitter") had the vertical Pong-clone minigame, called "Paddle War". A real time-waster, though the computer was far too easy to beat.

    • Re:Real life pong (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:43AM (#10316377)
      Pong = fake
      Ping Pong = real
      Therefore: real Pong = fake Ping Pong
      and ping = real/Pong

      Got it?

    • Re:Real life pong (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FrankHaynes ( 467244 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:58AM (#10316426)
      It could also be called 'air hockey', requiring no computer and providing a true tactile experience to the players.

      My brother had an RCA color television with built-in PONG on it. You pushed a mechanical button to activate the PONG game and hooked up the controller(s) to go to town. What will they think of next?

      Amazing how such a stupidly simple game could be so captivating to a primitive audience. Are we smarter these days or just more jaded?

      • Amazing how such a stupidly simple game could be so captivating to a primitive audience. Are we smarter these days or just more jaded?

        Smarter these days? It seems like several of us were captivated by this implementation of Pong (i.e. reading the article, posting about it, etc.)

      • Re:Real life pong (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tsiangkun ( 746511 )
        I'm captivated by this mechanical device as much as I was with my first pong system.

        Pong was the first time I can remember moving something displayed on my television around the screen with a control knob. Magically, other objects could interact with my bar on the screen in a manner that was intuitive and predictable. New experiences are often facinating/captivating to the audience. I don't see how the audience can be called primitive for having a natural response to a new experience.
      • Amazing how such a stupidly simple game could be so captivating to a primitive audience. Are we smarter these days or just more jaded?

        Oh yeah. I remember back then, all those primitive fools wasting quarters on that stupidly simple game. I used to shout, "Stop wasting your time, you idiots! Don't you know in thirty years we will be achieving perfect shadows at 30fps in our first person shooters and immersing ourselves in massive MMPORGS?"

        Oh and and a few years before that my family was so stupid that

        • Re:Real life pong (Score:2, Interesting)

          by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
          Few people remember the generations of games before pong. There were film-strip WW-I flying games that probably had some lame-ass system where if the gun was pointed in the right place and the trigger pressed, mechanical contacts on a conductive strip on the film would give you the hit. Or something.
    • What about air hockey?
    • More like air hockey

  • Next in line... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mortiss ( 812218 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:29AM (#10316317)
    Doom3

    This one might require lots of black velvet courtains.

  • Movie Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by chrispyman ( 710460 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:32AM (#10316325)
    Incase of a slashdotting, here's a link to the movie of Mechanical Pong [chrispyman.com] in action!
  • if your prior art is rendered in prior art, do you have a case?

  • Cool... or is it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:35AM (#10316337)
    That's really cool, but how much heat do all those relays produce over time? Unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like the perfect game to play on a cold day.

  • Blip (Score:5, Informative)

    by phreakv6 ( 760152 ) <phreakv6@gma i l . com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:36AM (#10316342) Homepage
    This [ev1.net]has been there since 1977

  • talk about retro (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quanza ( 25456 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:36AM (#10316344)
    dude, this thing is more retro than the original game - phone relays?!

    • Re:talk about retro (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hughk ( 248126 )
      Yes and from 1958.

      Many early computers used telephone system components as they were relatively sophisticated, bulk produced, reasonable quality and cheap.

  • Way cool (Score:3, Funny)

    by 0WaitState ( 231806 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:36AM (#10316349)
    Charles Babbage would be proud.

  • huh? Not physical enough... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anubis333 ( 103791 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:37AM (#10316350) Homepage
    Why are there control sticks?, why not control it manually like air hocky.

  • Marx TV Tennis toy (Score:5, Informative)

    by phreakv6 ( 760152 ) <phreakv6@gma i l . com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:38AM (#10316355) Homepage
    since 1975... A completely mechanical version of the arcade version of Pong, in which the "ball" is an illuminated flashlight bulb connected by long rubber springs to the player's control knobs.

    • Re:Marx TV Tennis toy (image) (Score:4, Informative)

      by erice ( 13380 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:55AM (#10316607) Homepage
      http://www.steverd.com/whatpong/tvtennis.jpg

      I actually own a similar model. Green, somewhat simpler styling but the same mechanicals. It's still somewhere in my old bedroom at my parents place. If I were the stereotypical nerd still living at home, I would have a photo of it by now.

      • It's still somewhere in my old bedroom at my parents place.

        If your parents are anything like mine, it was tossed into the trash a month after you moved out. Quick run home and get it now, before all your childhood memorabilia is tossed and your old room is turned into a sewing room!

  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:39AM (#10316363)
    And in germany people are complaining that we lost our edge when it comes to technology.

    Face it, Germany once again is a technology leader (at least in the field of geeky true life retro gaming)

  • That's pretty cool, anyone remember blip? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xenophrak ( 457095 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @01:51AM (#10316399)

    I'm probably making myself look very old, but I used to have a handheld mechanical pong game in the early 80's. It wasn't as dynamic as the pong game here, but it was wind up, and used a then-new LED as the ball.

    It was called Blip and made by Tomy.

    Here's a pic [ev1.net].

    Nostalgia is fun

    • Whoa! I had one of those when I was a kid. A hand-me-down from somewhere, I suppose. Forgot all about it. I remember playing with it a lot, but not properly. I think it was broken or something. I mean, it worked. The ball moved back and forth and such, but it never seemed to react correctly.

      In any case, I took it apart. Not to fix it, mind you, but just because it had blinky lights and made fun sounds.

      I did that to things with blinky lights a lot. Unfortunately I was not always so good and puttin
    • I sold a Blip on eBay back in Nov '01 for A$12 including p&h. There simply aren't enough people that appreciate it.
  • we get some flat surface - maybe raise it about a meter or so. then get a couple of wetware units installed at each end with some wooden paddle things.

    THEN we could use some small ball thing and have the wetware units keep the ball bouncing from side to side.

    the speed of the ball moving from one side to the other would be the ping time ...

    Yeah - that'd work. We could call it Ping Pong (but some boring fart would probably name it table tennis)

    I wonder how to register a patent

  • Very cool (Score:5, Interesting)

    by I7D ( 682601 ) <ian.shook@NOSPaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:00AM (#10316432) Homepage
    But with a few more pullys and strings, perhaps they could create 3D pong, which i'm sure is much more playable IN 3D as opposed to simulated.

  • About freakin time... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here I am, using my Atari like a sucker! Hey, I can't wait for the complete first season of Smurfs on DVD, then HeMan...

    "We are the consumer whores, selling ourselves to purchase this generations technology, and attempting to revisit the electronic devices that raised us during childhood while our parents were selling themselves for their generations technology, and an inexpensive babysitter. Through nostalgic mediums we discover our true mother and father; television and video games."
    -JW Malkin

  • Next step... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by khrtt ( 701691 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:17AM (#10316489)
    ...for pong is arcanoid. I'd love to see that mechanized:-)
    • Jeez, a Breakout type game like this with sensors for each brick would be insane. The relays would definitely heat the house ;).
    • Isn't a pinball machine a lot like that?

      • Re:Next step... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DZign ( 200479 )
        Sort of.. with much more switches and stepper motors..

        As someone who's busy with pinball machines (see my website) I'm sometimes amazed about how electro-mechanical pinball machines work and how clever the guys who designed these were. People think they're smart now we've got computers, but some old skills we lost. I do believe that if transistors/IC's were not invented, with electro-mechanical components we'd do impressive things.
        EM pinball machines may look to have simple rules, but the problem was the p

      • Re:Next step... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by artg ( 24127 )
        A Hyperball is closer. Although it has a processor like other 1980s pinball systems, it feels like a semi-mechanical version of Space Invaders.
        A cannon fires many steel balls at moving light patterns, and a hit is detected when the a ball falls through one of the traps around the edge of the playfield.

        See http://www.gamearchive.com/Pinball/Manufacturers/ W illiams/hyperball.html [gamearchive.com]

  • Big deal! (Score:4, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:17AM (#10316490) Homepage
    Three people with laser pointers can play Pong. (The middle person, who plays the ball, also has to do the sound effects and keep score.)

  • 52 Relays, all produced in 1958 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hughk ( 248126 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:33AM (#10316535) Journal
    Looking at the technical data page, it looks like the machine is using telephone relays from 1958. I don't know if they were ever used or were surplus spares.

    What could we build now with electronics from 1958? Given the evils of silicon creep, it would be an interesting question whether the components would last 46 years.

    Lastly, the power consumption is just a respectable 230w, about the same as a PC. Not bad!

  • Zuse stuff... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Goonie ( 8651 ) * <robert.merkel@be ... g ['ra.' in gap]> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:44AM (#10316578) Homepage
    Slightly offtopic, but if any Slashdotters ever visit Munich, you can see a replica of Konrad Zuse's Z3, and a Z4, at the Deutches Museum [deutsches-museum.de], probably the greatest technology museum in the world.

    They have so much geeky stuff there you could spend three or four days there and still not appreciate it all. There's captions to most things in English, so you don't have to speak German to get a lot out of the place.

    • Re:Zuse stuff... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Hessi ( 53010 )
      Oh yes, the Z3 in Munich is great. During a guided tour, I had the chance to see it in action. I think I never heard a computer with better sound.

      Funny thing: We wanted to compute: 5+3. The result was 7, because some of the relais were not functioning anymore.
      Unfortunately, they do not have the manpower to keep their old stuff in good shape, more and more of it gets damaged over the years. :-(
    • I have some pictures from when I visited the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin [www.dtmb.de] a few months ago on my moblog 23-07-2004 [matthewgrove.co.uk]. They also have loads of Zeus stuff, it is a seriously cool, well worth a visit.

    • I've been to the Deutsches Museum. It's an engineer's dream museum. They have exhibits on all sorts science and engineering subjects.

      The place is absolutely huge: you'd probably need a week to go through it all if you looked at everything. I just saw the Computer Science section (very cool) and it took at least half a day to go through.

      I strongly recommend paying it a visit if you're ever in Munich, even if you don't spend much time there.

      Wow, I visited their website [deutsches-museum.de] and just now and I found a list [deutsches-museum.de]

  • Had this when I was a child (Score:5, Interesting)

    by carcosa30 ( 235579 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:46AM (#10316581)
    When I was a little kid, I had a motorized Pong that my father found at a Salvation Army shop. It was roughly the size and form factor of one of those "streamlined" one-piece VT100s with the integral keyboard. It had little lights representing paddle and ball, in an attempt to try to seem like a "video game," but in fact they were driven by motorized arms-- you could hear them grinding, and the grinding got louder and louder until finally a gear broke or something and it no longer worked.

    I wish I hadn't thrown it away, I could probably trade it for a Testarossa now or something.

  • Other mechanicalized video games? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:47AM (#10316582) Homepage Journal
    A while ago I was wondering how hard it would be to rig up a totally mechanical pac-man. Of course, the ghost AI would be near-impossible (unless you want to create a mechanical computer) but I was thinking you could have the pac-man be a hold in the board, and when you moved it, pellets would fall through...
    • What about a real life version of pac-man, with your friends draped in sheets and running through a labyrinth, eating yellow M&Ms?

      Oh, I forgot, this is Slashdot. I have no friends.

      • Both of these have been done - too lazy/not enough time to find links, but there was some kind of pacman board game which used marbles for the dots, and pacman kinda rolled around on it on wheels, as did the ghosts - hence they always moved in his general direction, chasing him (clever solution to the AI) you played by tilting the board with a joystick

        As for real life pacman.. this was covered on Slashdot a while back.. a bunch of people dressed as pacman and ghosts went running around New York or somewher
        • I had a board game version of Pac Man. One player moved Pac Man and the other player(s) moved the ghosts. The ghosts were cardboard cutouts of the ghosts, Pac Man himself was a big plastic Pac Man with a scoopy thing which picked up marbles as you moved him. There were a bunch of white marbles and 4 yellow marbles, and when you ate a yellow marble you put a little hat looking thing on the pac man piece and he could eat the ghosts, taking them out of commision for several turns (I think you rolled a die.) E

  • "Inspired by Konrad Zuse" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zen Punk ( 785385 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .rennobdivadc.> on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @02:48AM (#10316588) Journal
    If you were fascinated by this electromechanical version of Pong, check out their links to the work of Konrad Zuse [epemag.com]. This guy designed and built the first programmable digital computer in 1936 in his parent's basement! Really amazing.

  • LOL. Oh yes. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Fallen Andy ( 795676 )
    I love electro mechanical stuff. Once, when I was
    a mere 8-9 year old kid, I got to be teached "how to
    play" music on a *real* hammond organ. No No. You think you know what I'm saying but you don't.

    It had *TWO* switches to switch it on.

    I still remember why.

    It's great fun to drop this gorgeous stuff on the the
    newbies out there.
    Hey even a few old timers will scratch their heads, but there really was a good technical reason for the *two* switches.

    Enjoy and be puzzled.

  • The next logical step (Score:4, Funny)

    by pesc ( 147035 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @03:30AM (#10316702)
    The next logical step would be to put the entire game in the basement and put a black/white video camera above it. Then wire it to your TV set.

    Imagine playing the mechanical pong game on yor TV, where you can actually see that it is not quite an electronic game!

  • huh? (Score:2)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 )
    Mechanical Pong
    from the pronounced-the-same dept.

    Err... so the Mechanical is silent?


    -Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]

  • I played a mechanical version of pong in the 70's (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SnappingTurtle ( 688331 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @04:20AM (#10316817) Homepage
    I can't remember who made it or what is was called, but it was definitely mechnical and definitely very pong-ish (if not a a fully faithful reproduction).

    I bought the game around 1976 at a yard sale for about $0.25. It consisted of a cheap plastic casing shaped like a tv. The "screen" was translucent plastic. The "ball" was an arm with a light at one end (almost touching the screen) and a counterweight at the other end so that the arm was essentially ambivalent if it swung up or down. An electric motor moved the arm so that the arm always wanted to swing left or right. (Sorry about all these anthropomorphisms, it's the only way I can think to describe it.)

    Each player had a handle that turned a mechnical bouncer up and down. If the arm swung past your bouncer, a buzzer buzzed.

    It didn't keep score and it was never as fast as pong or as... um, exciting (if you can use that word with pong). But by golly I got it for a quarter and played the heck out of it. Then I took it apart and figured out how it worked. Then at some point I donated it to the landfill.

    • I had one, too. Sold it at a yard sale for, ummm... more than a quarter. 'Course it was broken by that point, too, but hey, even marked 'broken, $1', someone bought it. Wonder if it's on eBay now.

      It was pretty lame, especially as you could buy, like, an electronic Pong for your TV. So it's not like someone made mechanical pong, then someone else said "hey, let's computerize it!". No, someone actually said "look at this electronic TV game, I bet we could make a mechanical version that still requires ba
  • What's next, a steam driven train? Hah.

  • So what abou the game, the video ROCKS! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The game is interesting and fun, but the video has to be one of the best geek-umentaries I have ever seen. There should be an award for this.

    5 points off, however, for the bit of misogyny with poor Almut misrepresenting the function of a relay.
  • I've been playing the physical version of pong for years. It's called ping pong. Or table tennis for all your pros out there.

  • Power Hog (Score:2, Funny)

    by Auger Duval ( 806421 )
    !!!OUCH I'd hate to see my electric bill for playing this game 24/7.... On the plus side, I could probably use it as a space heater in the winter... -AD

  • wrong controllers (Score:3, Informative)

    by Distan ( 122159 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:11AM (#10317781)
    This is not pong.

    Pong was a game played with two "paddle" controllers, another word for variable resistors. The speed your paddle moved was controlled by the speed you moved the paddle. It was fundamentally an analog input.

    This thing uses joysticks for controllers, as digital inputs. The speed the paddle moves is not controllable by the player.

    This "Pongmechanik" thing is another game altogether, and not Pong at all. Nonetheless, a beowulf cluster of them would be intriguing.

  • But where's the suffering? (Score:3, Funny)

    by borg1238 ( 692335 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @09:41AM (#10317962)
    Hunh, that's odd, I always assumed all German games were required to have some sort of pain [wired.com] element.
  • Anybody seen Bill and Ted's Bogus Adventure? They beat Death at Pong.
  • It must be fascinating to look at it, since you'll be able to see the inner workings of the thing.

    Although I am not old enough to write about it, I just imagine how interesting it would be to be able to look into a panel and track the movement of a single byte through the system, as described in an old Wired article on old computer systems.

    I also imagine that, once my amazement wears off, looking into a panel full of flashing lights must have been very, very boring. Go figure.

  • Bow-chicka-WOW-wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by xant ( 99438 ) on Wednesday September 22, 2004 @11:19AM (#10318836) Homepage
    Cool game, but DAMN does the movie look and feel like it's about to turn into German porn at any time. You've got the cheesy lighting, the guy and the girl facing up, the German narrator who sounds like he's narrating god knows what kind of clothing-optional meetup.

    And THEN the Atari guy, naked, shows up on screen. WTF???

    Maybe it's just me?
  • When I was in high school, we didn't have computers. So I build built one out of surplus telephone relays. [animats.com]

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