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Datin' myself here...

PONG. The original video game. And interestingly enough, it wasn't in the U.S. There was a Pong machine in a bar in Seville, Spain, in 1975 when I and my family visited there for the summer. At first none of us knew what it was, but when another customer told us, we all sat down and spent a couple of hours switching off and playing it. (The machine was a sit-down one, somewhat lower than a normal fast-food table, with the screen horizontal so the players could all look down on it, and the controls under the screen on two sides of the table so your hand were under the machine.)

It was a BLAST. Hard to believe now that video games have become so complex, but that rectangular paddle and square ball seemed like magic to us. The idea of being able to control what was going on on what was basically a television screen - wow. And the steady unchanging action of the elements was really strange after so many years of pinball machines and their rollicking, gravity-controlled motions. It would be about 25 years before I saw a video game that imitated the world of actual physics.

I sure would like to sit down to a real, original Pong machine again. It would be fun to see how it stacks up now.