What Pong invented

Rules + physics + score. Pong (1972) is the proof that those three, alone, make a complete game. Everything after inherits the frame.

The part that makes it a sport is one rule: where the ball meets your paddle is where the return goes. Center sends it straight; edge sends it veering. Your paddle is your aim. Skill expression, one sentence long.

The fake physics

The paddle isn't a wall. It isn't even physics. In the 1972 machine, collision was a video AND gate — if the ball's signal and the paddle's signal lit at the same instant, that was a hit — and the reply was authored, not computed: send the ball back toward the opponent, angled by where it struck. Eight paddle segments, eight replies. The incoming angle was thrown away. No surface normal existed anywhere in the circuit. This rebuild keeps the doctrine and reads the strike continuously instead of in eighths.

Why not real physics? Because a paddle that obeyed honest reflection could carom a late save into your own goal — physically correct, historically impossible, instantly unfair. No Pong permits it: the reply always points at the opponent. Fidelity to the mechanic beats fidelity to Newton.

The opponent is honest

It tracks the ball at a capped speed, and the cap is its entire personality. You can't outlast it — straight returns come back forever. You out-angle it: buy a diagonal it can't cover in time. And the rally quickens 3.5% with every clean strike, topping out near double serve speed, so every exchange bends toward a kill.

Two players was the original machine — one knob each, nobody in between. The house opponent is this production's translation for a phone alone. Bring a friend: the top paddle is theirs.