Pong is widely considered to be the world’s first “video game”. The story is unparalleled, the voice acting is top notch, the gameplay is everything you could ask for in a 2020 video game, but Can You Beat Pong Without Moving?
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Can You Beat Pong Without Moving? (in text form)
To start, let’s first discuss what qualifies as “movement” in Pong. It’s up or down ya’ idiot what else did you think it would be. For personal reasons, and as to not violate any restraining orders, I ended up choosing Pong: The Next Level for the Gameboy Color as the version of Pong I would play. I didn’t want to play it in a browser. Pong’s not a complicated game, but something about virtually playing it on an emulated version of the game’s console felt more authentic than playing it in a web internet browser. Also because finding a way to play the arcade version of Pong in an emulator was far more convoluted than I expected it to be.
Crack your knuckles and give your mustache twirl, because we’re in. Before doing anything else, I had to stretch. You always want to work your legs a bit before hunkering down for a flight. Not that I would really know anything about that. The last time I was on a plane was when I went to Disney World in 2005 and that was only like a 3 hour flight. With all the formalities out of the way, I began the challenge of beating Pong without moving.
In case you either didn’t know or lacked the higher brain functionality to put it together on your own, the mechanics of Pong are not very difficult. Where the ball hits the paddle determines where the ball goes. If it’s closer to the center, it’s effectively straight across the field. If it’s towards edge, it’ll be a more extreme angle. That’s about it. In this version of Pong, you need 11 points to win.
Going in, I expected this to be a colossal time-sink. I thought it would be a numbers game, unrelated to the scores required to win. Call me a cheater if you want, but I sped up the game using an emulator for this exact reason. Difficulty is nonexistent. The question wasn’t supposed to be can it be done, rather it was how long it would take.
There are a couple problems worth pointing out. The first is the likelihood that the ball hits my paddle at all upon being served. It was not at all uncommon for the ball to miss my paddle for 8 or 9 out of the 11 servings in a match. So, statistically, it doesn’t look good. Let’s say it hits my paddle 8 out of 11 times. That’s a 27% chance to bounce the ball back. Even if that guaranteed a victory, it would have to happen 11 times total. There can only be 21 servings in a game, 52% (11 out of 21) of those must hit my paddle but you know what, this doesn’t even matter. You wanna know why? Here’s why.