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Games Entertainment

G4: The Pong Channel? 267

Posted by chrisd from the tired-of-the-fireplace-channel dept.
CoffeeNowDammit writes "Care to watch other people play Pong? You may be able to do so with the debut of G4, a new US cable channel (via participating Comcast cable providers) devoted entirely to video-gaming. G4 will air a marathon of Pong.. 24 hours a day.. see ball, see ball bounce.. for an entire week. Story is here . What a country." This has got to be a joke, right? A fake press release? Please, tell me it's a joke.
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G4: The Pong Channel? More

G4: The Pong Channel?

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  • Joke (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Creepy13 ( 239104 )
    This HAS to be a joke..

    Or are there actually people who would PAY for this?? (since it's a subscribers channel).

    Who wants to watch people playing games anyway? I'd rather play thos games instead of watching.

    • Re:Joke (Score:2, Interesting)

      by digitalunity ( 19107 )
      Pong? At least give us UT tournaments.

      I'll pay only for the very best.

    • Re:Joke (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Blackwulf ( 34848 )
      Nope, it's no joke. You're just taking it the wrong way.

      It's a test feed before the real programming starts on May 1st - they just decided to run Pong instead of boring color bars with a low tone for a week.

      I thought it was really a creative way to get interest in the channel. Guess I was wrong.

    • It's no joke. It's already on my cable system.

      I really have to wonder who'll watch this channel. I happen to like TechTV (which I can't get), but if that channel is falling on hard times, I can't imagine how this one is going to make it.

  • The Sega Channel (Score:2, Interesting)

    by svwolfpack ( 411870 )
    Somehow, it just wont be as cool as the sega channel...now THAT was hot... Video games are great and all, but watching people play video games rather than playing them yourself... I just dont know. Hopefully, they'll focus more on behind the scenes, and less on famous gamers and whatnot.
    • I agree the sega channel was interesting... one of the first cable based networks. too bad it failed in the end... just not enough support damnit! I bet the first show on G4 is about that fong guy who played quake... you know a 'where are they now' Dennis(I think thats his first name) Fong today lives with his parents in their surbaban home... even though he is 30 years old and has no job. He expected the money and 'ho's' to come rolling in after beating all in a quake tournment. After having an everCrack addiction however his life was nearly cutshort by losing his charecter in the dirty wastes.
    • When I was living in Germany, they had a show sponsored by GIGA [www.giga.de] that was part of the NBC offering. During a large portion (I think from 22:00 - 24:00) of the rather long show, they featured reviews of video games. They provided reviews on new games, controllers and other hardware, and tips on playing the games. For the serious gamer, it's quite interesting. Any channel that wants to cover nothing but video games will have to offer similar resources to be successful. If people can't get information on new games and improving their own play, they aren't likely to remain interested.

  • Considering the other choices.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jx100 ( 453615 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:44AM (#3407955)
    At least it's a little more intellectually stimulating than, say the average "100 greatest (insert musical genre)" marathons
    • Considering that there are channels that are Nothing but advertising, and people will actually watch those ....

      this has a certain zen like aspect to it that is refreshing.

      Fortunately, I hardly ever watch TV, and I never got cable, because things on it worth seeing hardly ever make an appearance.

      [it's a cost benefit ratio thing. Is it worth paying hundreds of dollars a year just in case something like the Osbournes will show up? I mean, what are the odds?]

  • I predict... (Score:2, Funny)

    by fewl ( 133959 )
    that heads are gonna roll before the week is out.

    "Seriously sir, if we do it for a whole week, people will start tuning in every day!"
    • I don't know, it could make sense. Like if they didn't have the regular programming ready for the launch date, so it was a choice between either making a computer play Pong against itself, or a a week-long color test. This way they at least get a little PR value out of it.
    • I know I'm weird, but I were channel-hopping and came across this, I'd be hypnotized. I'd be in the zone. I'd be THERE.

      Blip..... blop. Blip.... blop. Blip.... GOAL!

      Blip..... blop. Blip.... blop ---> ad infinitum.

  • Hopefully not a joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by seinman ( 463076 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:46AM (#3407961) Homepage Journal
    I, for one, hope it's NOT a joke. I absolutly love watching others play video games. But that's probably because I suck at them myself. Either way, i'd pay for this channel in a heartbeat.

    Oh wait, nevermind.... disregard the above post. I was too stoned to realize what i was typing.
    • But pong? I like watching and playing video games too, but pong is just... pong. It's bland. As in not interesting. Gimme a story, or at least some color!

    • Re:Hopefully not a joke (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Watching other people play games is just as stupid as watching other people having sex. What's the point? Why watch it when you can have it! :) ..heh.. I suppose there's an answer to that question, but I'll try not to think about that..
    • Yes - "video games" - but Pong is so far back in the mists of time of video gaming it's hardly fun to watch for more than a few minutes compared to todays graphically lush offerings!

  • It's no joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hee Hee Hee ( 310695 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:47AM (#3407964)
    They're putting this up against C-SPAN, and the Home Shopping Network. I've heard that they hope to have 30% market penetration in three months.


    In other news...grass on the median of Central Avenue grew 1" in the past ten days, and the paint dried on Mrs. Jones' living room walls in only three hours!

  • Another Slashdot mispelling (Score:5, Funny)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:47AM (#3407965) Homepage
    This was obviously for the new Porn channel, not Pong channel. Why on Earth would someone from Slashdot submit a story that had nothing to do with porn and everything to do with nostalgia game play?

  • Ad breaks? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tunah ( 530328 ) <sam&krayup,com> on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:47AM (#3407966) Homepage
    Will there be ad breaks? I just know I'm gonna be in the bathroom when the most exciting goal is scored...

    • Re:Ad breaks? (Score:2, Funny)

      by uk_greg ( 187765 )
      One word - TIVO.

    • Re:Ad breaks? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe they could get soccer announcers, and whenever a person gets a goal ... they can scream:

      GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL L!

      Along with slo-mo's ... and instant replays ...

  • They must have meant porn... (Score:4, Funny)

    by EvilNTUser ( 573674 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:50AM (#3407970)
    I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of their beancounters when someone else actually reads the market study they've obviously been adhering to and notices that they've mistakenly read that a "pong-marathon" would be good for ratings instead of "porn-marathon" :-)

  • spoiler (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:52AM (#3407971)
    > see ball, see ball bounce

    Thanks for spoiling it! chrisd: all your plotlines are belong to frontpage.

  • and next week.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by explosionhead ( 574066 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:52AM (#3407972) Homepage
    Squint in amazement at our week long marathon of text based MUD's.
    All your favorites, all day, all week long. Don't touch that dial.
    • followed by our month-long epic "World's Greatest Blue Screens of Death"...

      (hey, relevant enough for windows gaming)
  • From the article:
    The channel plans to offer 13 original weekly series, focusing on topics like sports games, gaming reviews, and hints and tricks for winning at popular video games. It is expected to have 350 to 400 hours of original content per year.

    The seven-day Pong marathon is just hype - but the channel is real.

    • Re:It's not a joke. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mericet ( 550554 )
      "It is expected to have 350 to 400 hours of original content per year."

      Does anyone else consider a 4% original content ratio insanly small? Or is it only me?

      Seriously, what is the world coming to?

      • It works for other channels. Consider The History Channel, which will take a four-hour block of programming and repeat it three times (at least) during the day. Each episode gets shown 5-6 times a year at least, making up about 18 hours of content each year for a one-hour show. Put enough individual shows together, throw in some documentaries, the occasional tech- or game-based movie, and some late-night infomercials, and it will be much like the others.

        Before you go thinking this is sarcasm speaking, it's not. Well, not entirely. It's actually pretty nice to know that if something is coming on THC just before I get home, that I can still catch it after dinner. I believe the various offshoots of THC and the several Discovery Channels use a similar programming method.
      • I bet that Fox is pretty close to that. Even when TV shows are in season, we see reruns half the time anyway. And I really enjoy the Andy Richter show, so why can't they play something other than 2 episodes for once!

  • Ohhh the station (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zephc ( 225327 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:54AM (#3407977)
    I thought they were talking about Pong on the G4 (computers), as in Open Firmware Pong [machack.com] from the 98 MacHack Contest [machack.com]

  • Televising video games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Paul Johnson ( 33553 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:54AM (#3407979) Homepage
    I can imagine televised video games, but it would have to be done right. (And "Pong" isn't doing it right).

    Most attempts to do it give you the players POV, which for most games sucks just as much as, say, head mounted cameras in conventional sports. The player dashes here and there, looks left, looks right, and from the players point of view its very straightforward, but from the viewer's point of view its a confusing jerky mess.

    What is needed is multi-player games with customised clients that act like camera positions. Put a "cameraman" in charge of the client with pan and zoom controls, and maybe smooth 3d traverse as well, and you would have a pleasant viewing experience.

    You also need games that can do well given such a gods-eye view. Quake capture the flag games in fairly open terrain could work very well indeed.

    Paul.

    • So, in short, Goldeneye & Perfect Dark bad, Super Mario Bros. 1-3 & Super Mario World 1-2 good. Well, Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best video game I have, so no complaints here.
      • Super Mario Bros. 1-3 & Super Mario World 1-2 good

        No, more like Rocket Arena 3 3rd person view mode after you die, or even better, Team Fortress demo style arena viewing. Imagine being able to spectate on the interaction between multiple players from a distance, instead of watching the game from a single player's perspective.

        This could be easily scripted in Q3, just make a script allowing the camera man to be invisible and invincible, and have him follow gamers around in arenas.

        Dunno how easily done it could be in other games though.

        • Re:Televising video games (Score:4, Informative)

          by CleverNickName ( 129189 ) <{ten.notaehwliw} {ta} {liw}> on Thursday April 25, 2002 @11:18AM (#3409608) Homepage Journal
          No, more like Rocket Arena 3 3rd person view mode after you die, or even better, Team Fortress demo style arena viewing. Imagine being able to spectate on the interaction between multiple players from a distance, instead of watching the game from a single player's perspective.

          This is exactly what my show, Arena, does. (I write the show, and I co-host it with my friend Travis.)

          We capture gameplay in team-based games like Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike using observer modes. We use flying cameras to follow the players, and we use some static cameras to capture areas which always have lots of action in them (like bombsites in CS or bases in UT.)

          Players compete in timed rounds, and win points for kills and capturing objectives (detonating/defusing bombs or capturing flags.) At the end of each show, we count up all the points and the team that wins gets to advance to the next episode, in a ladder-tournament.

          I've been telling my producers that we should get some website teams together, so Team Slashdot could play Team K5, or Team FARK could play Team Something Awful.
    • I've had crowds gather when I've played Max Payne in the dorm on a Wednesday night. But that's more of a show-off single-player game than exciting multiplayer action.
      • My dorm had nothing of the sort, but I know someone who apparently lived on a floor where people would bring bowls of popcorn into the rooms of people playing Rainbow Six.

        Screw Roger Wilco and the like - These people just opened their doors and yelled loudly. :)
    • It has to be said, after playing some intense and long games of starcraft where you feel like a god if you win and worthless if you lose, I would love to see some of the best people in the world play starcraft. Think of a match between the creators or something of the sort. It would be a huge mammoth battle full of strategies, and unlike chess it would be pretty obvious what was going on. Imagine watching two side and consider the following possibilities:

      1. Both sides rush each other, one side wins, kind of boring kind of cheap.

      2. Both sides rush each other, no one wins, they both struggle and fight, hopefully pull some tricks.

      3. They both sit and build for a long time, one side has the advantage and you can't wait for the ass kicking to ensue, real drawn out, dragon ball Z style.

      4. They both build and no one is clearly ahead. Strategy and balance come into play as well as how the attacks are drawn out, very interesting indeed.

      Factor in distractions, multiple players, teams, magic, the different races, diversions, etc. and you have some cheap gripping television.
    • It's out, now, in a highly entertaining and usable format. It's called HLTV, and it comes with the current version of Half Life. It is similar to some proxy programs written for Quake World way-back-when.

      With HLTV, the TV server connects to the server hosting the game. Then viewers connect to the HLTV server and can watch the action. Not only can they see the game through the players eyes, but they can switch to chase cam view, and an overhead map view that looks like an animated football-play diagram, with little circles running around the map.

      In addition, because the HLTV server delays what you see by several seconds, it can find the most 'exciting' content and switch you to it before it happens... did some player get 3 kills in a row? Jump to that! Is a counter terrorist defusing the bomb? Let's see if he makes it!

      Imagine if car races had cameras that could be anywhere at any time, and the race was delayed by 30 seconds so they could find the coolest shots before they happened... never miss the beginning shot of the crash again!

      I cannot wait to see technology like this spread to other game types other than first person shooters.
  • Just imagine all the stoners that they will get watching this channel.

    Woh its pong and its moving but I'm not doing anything
    Just a joke, don't get so annoyed.

  • Europe has Game Network (Score:4, Informative)

    by ringbarer ( 545020 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @05:59AM (#3407985) Homepage Journal
    Which alternates between crap and crap with a Manowar soundtrack. The main show they have involves footage from games with 'real world' music dubbed over the top. Either Eurotrash pop or Power Metal, funnily enough.

    They've now started to branch out a bit by having 'review' slots, which can be quite entertaining in themselves, having two guy geeks and a girl geek flirting around and occasionally mentioning the games. But they spoil it all by intercutting the real programming with extended 3-minute-plus adverts for premium rate phone in competitions which are apparently their only source of revenue.

    It's crap, but it's watchable crap.

  • So? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by xt ( 225814 )
    There are a lot of other shows out there presenting the same quality viewing... They are just glorified and called names like reality, social, news...

    Come to thing of it, this must be the first show on TV where you get to see what promised!

    As for ads, they will just throw subliminal messages. I bet if you watch a ball bounce for a couple of hours, you are receiptive to pretty much everything they show you!

    (watch the ball, Luke... (-: )

  • Target Audience (Score:3, Funny)

    by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @06:02AM (#3407991)
    7 days of pong. Just enough time to build up an audience of people who are used to switching over from Teletubbies as they get baked in front of their TV. Then switch the programing. Hopefully the inertia built up from pure habit will maintain the audience.
  • Fianlly something worth watching!

  • PONG!! (Score:2)

    by torpor ( 458 )
    Hey, pong rocks:

    http://www.access-music.de/img/welcomejay.jpg

    It's clear to me, on a daily basis, that pong is the new religion ...

    ;)
  • One whole week of Pong?

    That ought to be enough time for G4's top executives to flee south of the border with suitcases full of cash, wouldn't you think? :]
  • ... to hear the Linux source being read out over radio [xs4all.nl].

  • You guys are missing something.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bludstone ( 103539 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @06:14AM (#3408009)
    This is a tactical move.

    People will be flipping through the channel and come across pong. They will stop, because everyone recognizes pong. They will see "g4, the videogame network" at the bottom corner. Many people in the target audience will go "duuude, check it out, man, a videogame network.. sweet!.. hey dont bogart that J"

    They will look at their tv and say "k, videogame network is channel 42, ill scope it out later." and change the channel.

    2 days later.. "what happened to that videogame network.." *flips through channels* "here it is.. woah, coverage of that new ps2 release that everyone is drooling over!"

    get it?

  • Annoying launch marathon not unusual (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kikta ( 200092 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @06:18AM (#3408023)
    There was a radio station in Louisville, KY (102.3 FM) that was re-launching back around '96 as a alternative rock station. About a week before they went on the air, they started playing the Beatles song "I Am The Walrus" over and over and over again. The rumor was that they were out to set a record. Either way, people would check in every once in a while to see if the station was up yet or maybe just out of morbid curiosity. When they did finally premier, everyone had heard of them and their ratings were sky-high.

    I'm assuming that the folks at G4 are just trying to create some buzz and do something fun at the same time. So, good luck to them... of course that alternative rock station is now a "smooth-rock" station. :-)
    • Actually a lot of stations do this. I believe it is called "stunting". Makes sense really, look at everyone getting in a tiz over 7 days of pong!
      "Hey - did you hear about that weird tv station that's playing pong for a week straight?"
      "no! - Hey, Jimmy did you hear about ...." ad naseum.

      Cheaper than a full fledged ad campaign.

      • Stunting is also not unusual for cable networks. When the Sci-Fi channel premiered in the early 90s, IIRC, for about a month beforehand they broadcast a spacey screen saver with a voiceover that said things like "We're coming for you, Madonna." "We're on our way, Mr. Yeltsin", etc... It was very creepy - they also had a timer counting down to their actual premier time.

        I remember being very frightened of the whole thing (I was in high school, but it still gave me the creeps) - and now it is one of my favorite cable networks. Go figure.

        Also, around 1990, a favorite station near me (it was 93Q in Toledo) went from being a top 40 station to an oldies station (I suspect that ClearChannel bought them out to make way for their own Top 40s station). Anyhoo, they played "Louie, Louie" nonstop for a week. Their press release said that they had looked at the demographics and concluded that people weren't getting enough "Louie, Louie". They were trying to fill that gap. Cute.

    • Yeah, a station did a similar thing in Oregon. When they switched formats, they ran a countdown. Using a text-to-voice synth they counted down in that computer voice for 5 days. Every few numbers they would throw in a one-liner at random.

      Unfortunately, they went Country, much to my dismay.

      Travis
    • A radio station out here did the same kind of thing, except what they did is play really good music non-stop. Zero commercials and zero dj time, and only brief station identifications... Man ... that was cool. The station is okay, but its nothing like a non-commercial paradise... too bad that stuff only happens in dreams... (or promotionals)
    • A station in Spokane, WA did this when I was in High School. The used the Official Rock Song of Washington State, "Louie Louie". I almost understood the words by the time they stopped. ;-) Did you know there's a heavy-metal version? And several other versions, too.

      The radio announcments were pretty funny. Having played Louie Louie 24x7 for 5 days straight, they led into the weekend with something like "Starting at 5pm Friday, a 24-hour Louie Louie weekend!" as if it were something new.

      The good thing was that you always knew at least one radio station would be playing a song you liked (well, at least at the beginning of the week you felt that way). While I was driving, a friend set all 24 FM presets on the radio to the Louie Louie station. That was good for a laugh.

      -Paul Komarek
    • We had a station switch from Lazer 96.1 (progressive rock) to Oldies 96.1 (duh)...but in the interim they played 1 week of Louie 96.1...consisting of every different version of _Louie Louie_ they could find, and not breaking a single time except for the FCC-required occasionaly mention of call letters and frequency, and one severe thunderstorm warning. Other than that, no ads or breaks at all. Just Louie. I wish they would've kept that, though, cuz Oldies 96.1 sucked and the new 96.1 that plays only raunchy country, and only 3 songs on rotation since country fans don't usually notice that sort of thing, sucks even worse.
    • In the Bay Area, when KSOL became Wild 107 (now Wild 94.9?), they suddenly and mysteriously played a 24-hour continuous loop of Tone Loc's Wild Thing. Man, that was sweet. I taped about two hours. :)
  • With a tv card and XawTV on the root window it whould make a nice desktop background...
  • And it seems to be going ok, they have their own multiplayer online game apparently called Legend Of Mir even which does well.
    They do things like game and hardware reviews, visit tech/game shows, interviews with designers, coders, etc etc, it can be very intresting.. Does have its extreme times of crap and theres FAR too many competitions that take up 10min slots..
    Not wanting to get marked flamebait, but alot of their reviews are better than the more common web site reviews ALA Slashdot/TomsHardware/Hexus etc.

  • Yes, in Europe, we already have dedicated game channel which show footage of video games being played. It's truly terrible.

    See a typical schedule here [satmania.com], or check out the network's website here [game-network.net]

  • Atari tennis? How about Tank? Space war?

    It's good that they decided to pick a classic, but I would have made it a single-day marathon, not a week. That's just too much.

    In the future, though, it would be great if they showed off new games as they are released, like Warcraft III, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and so on. That way, I'd be able to see how the game actually plays before I go out and buy it. Reading the back of boxes just doesn't give enough information on what the game is really like.

  • Unreal Tournament Spectate Mode (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ticklejw ( 453382 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @06:49AM (#3408069) Homepage
    Wow, I can see some real promise for something like Unreal Tournament [unrealtounament.com]. Have the UT hour, where players can sign up to play for an hour, and its commented on like those crazy sports commentator people, and with spectate mode, it would be so easy to set up various "cameras" here and there to keep an eye on the game and all..

    it would be cool ;-)

    -J

    • It's on Arena (Score:4, Informative)

      by Blackwulf ( 34848 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @09:40AM (#3408973) Homepage
      There is a show like this on the network, called "Arena".

      One of Slashdot's favorites, Wil Wheaton, is one of the commentators on the show.

      • Re:It's on Arena (Score:4, Informative)

        by CleverNickName ( 129189 ) <{ten.notaehwliw} {ta} {liw}> on Thursday April 25, 2002 @02:32PM (#3410929) Homepage Journal
        I posted this earlier, but I think messed it up, so I'm reposting it here. Moderate as necessary.

        Here's what Arena is:

        We capture gameplay in team-based games like Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike using observer modes. We use flying cameras to follow the players, and we use some static cameras to capture areas which always have lots of action in them (like bombsites in CS or bases in UT.)

        Players compete in timed rounds, and win points for kills and capturing objectives (detonating/defusing bombs or capturing flags.) At the end of each show, we count up all the points and the team that wins gets to advance to the next episode, in a ladder-tournament.

        I've been telling my producers that we should get some website teams together, so Team Slashdot could play Team K5, or Team FARK could play Team Something Awful.

        I've seen two episodes completed, and our third episode's rough cut...and they totally don't suck.

        On a more personal note, I wrote at my website this morning:

        This is how much of a nerd I am: I didn't care about The Wall Street Journal (I'd link, but those bastards want 50 bucks from me), or Reuters... but I got all excited when I saw the channel I work for in a story on Slashdot. Yep, news for Wil, stuff that matters.
  • If you're going to do a game marathon to introduce a new station, you can't use Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Frogger, or any of those other games that still come out in new iterations for Windows every now and then. You've got to reach way back into the past to come up with something you can license cheaply enough to make a 24-hour 7-day marathon feasible - and Pong sounds like it fits that bill.
  • this one [theregister.co.uk] looks serious. .....Price per play for a game which has been widely cloned and is widely available for free has not as yet been disclosed.

  • TiVo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @07:11AM (#3408130) Homepage
    If only this would come to the UK, where I am. Then I could give three thumbs up to a showing of Pong, sit back and wait for Tivo's recommendations to start flooding in.

    Of course, with pause and rewind of live TV, I would never again miss a crucial shot...

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • The launch comes at a time when the video game industry is at the beginning of a multi-year growth cycle...

    So, someone said this to the journalist in an interview, so he turns around and prints it as fact. Not "so and so says that the industry is..." but, in the same ways ss he would say "the sky is blue" he prints whatever prognostications some industry insider cares to share as if they were physical truth.

    Yes, I'm aware that the next statement starts many analysts predict... but that doesn't impact the first statement; in fact, it makes it stronger since it implies that the only disagreement is on the intensity of growth.

    That's about the quality of journalism I expect from yahoo. Snarl.
  • Did you ever watch your children play football.

    It is all the same unless you are on the field and your body is on the line.

    Pong is fine by me.
  • Sit with a friend in front of the TV and tell people it's a mind-control computer game.

    Pity it wasn't out at the start of the month.

    Bob.

  • If it were the Painstation [www.khm.de] I'd watch it. The Painstation is a version of Pong where one hand controls the game and the other rests in a pain unit. Every time you miss the ball, you get some pain. The first person to remove his hand from the pain unit loses. The pain comes in three kinds: heat, whip, and electric shock.

    Those wacky Germans!

  • They do it in Finland (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DataSquid ( 33187 )
    Well, not pong, but video games in general. Basically they just show the game while a couple guys play and talk. They aren't especially good, they're not reviewing the game (from what I can tell, and none of the games are new releases) and they rarely show the human players. Usually just the game screen.

    Now, this is in a country where I believe there are about (only) 15 channels or so (where I am). It's on during the day too. So I guess someone likes it. In the evening it gets even more interesting when the chat shows begin. 9pm or so one or two channels show what is basically just a pretty IRC console. And you watch people chat. Fun.

    I leave for home on Saturday. Gonna miss this place.

    I can smell the improper application of an 'offtopic' to this post already....


  • Hey. I remember a /. article about people using Quake and other FPS game engines as a type of underground movie making system. I checked a couple out and wished I'd had something like this around when I was fifteen. The Quake 2 based movies I saw were pretty chunky and cheesey, but I liked the possiblities. Does anyone know if this scene is still happening? I'd like to see what they've been able to accomplish with some of the newer engines.

  • I wonder who's doing announcing? I find it hard to keep up, sometimes.

    Well its american TV, so they'll probably have a blue streak following the ball, so I can figure out where it is.
  • I can see this turning into a larger trend. Remember 'Bang the Machine' [bangthemachine.com] a film that some people put together to cover the 'deep' end of StreetFighter tournaments? I believe it got shown on SXSW... Believe it or not these guys play deep strategy, out-psych their opponents, and generally play at the edge of the game's envelope. It was supposed to be a surprising good look into the guys who play the game at the grand-master level and the 'culture' that has formed around them.

    now...

    try that with pong
    . . .
    . .
    .
    didn't think so...
    but in the meantime, check out slime volleyball! [diddly.com]
  • Hopes:

    I hope this will be better than that awful "GamePro" tv show on Saturday mornings many moons ago.

    Maybe they will play old episodes of Starcade(I think that's the name), which, according to the web page, featured MANY videogames from the early '80s that I never even heard of before, nor are they listed on KLOV for some.

    The funniest videogame tv "show"(on the net, at least) were these 2 guys reviewing Kasumi Ninja for the Atari jaguar. Your typical MK ripoff. The funniest bit, which they played again during their closing comments, was this Kilt-wearing Scotsman who's special attack was lifing up his kilt, and a fireball shot out. Good stuff.

  • It's just G4's version of "Color Bars" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Blackwulf ( 34848 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @09:33AM (#3408916) Homepage
    The press release is no joke - they really are showing Pong. But the reason behind it is because EVERY cable TV network has to test their feed before they truly go live. MOST networks do something boring like color bars with a low tone. G4 decided to be CREATIVE and show Pong for ONE WEEK and everybody gets all over them. The real programming starts on May 1st.

    It figures, though. The last time G4 was announced on Slashdot in November, it got a very heavy critisizm that it wouldn't work from CmdrTaco. I submitted the story it was launching 3 times last week and it was rejected. I guess they were waiting for a NEGATIVE story to come in before covering it at all. So I guess Slashdot will be unsupportive of the new network. Yet I bet if they showed Linux all the time it would be hailed as the second coming.
  • Did anyone else watch Dave Attell last night? He was in Charleston, and one of the places he stopped by was someone's house where they were having a LAN party. I must say it was pretty amusing to watch him try to figure out what was going on, but he did seem interested. Probably the best part was when he had a beer with the kids mom. =]

  • Probably getting equipment before content (Score:4, Informative)

    by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Thursday April 25, 2002 @10:14AM (#3409175) Homepage Journal
    This actually happens with a lot of new channels. If you're planning to show something you have to pay for, you don't want to start with real content. If your equipment gets delayed, or you have problems with it when you start, you don't want to be wasting content you paid for. On the other hand, you don't want to pay for your broadcast bandwidth if you're not going to broadcast anything.

    So the usual thing to do is to broadcast something really cheap until you know it's all working correctly. Of course, you run into the danger of people actually preferring the fake content to what you actually want to show. (There was one station that broadcast a camera pointed at a fishtank until they got their studio ready, and then people called in to request the fishtank)

  • Who remembers "TV Pow," from an independent station in Hartford, CT, possibly channel 64, back in the early 80's?

    During an afternoon cartoon commercial break, two kids would call in and play a Galaxian-like game where each time the kid yelled "POW!" into the phone, his ship would shoot. It was comical because in 30 seconds of play, rarely did anyone ever get more than 2 or 3 points.

  • Check this poll [gamefaqs.com].
    Admitedly, it is a gamer site, but the results still are... disturbing...
  • Message [g4media.com] I got when i tried to go to the site...

    for some reason that made my day....

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