Pong hit the ‘go’ gong in ’72

Ready to ping back in time? Here is a 25-cent tour of some of the big scores in the history of arcade games:

Atari released the first hugely successful arcade game, Pong, in 1972. The “ball” was a dot of light, and the game played like table tennis. The cabinet had a flat yellow front, no pictures.

Pong set the ball in motion. Working for Atari was “the closest thing to being a rock star,” as Time magazine described the era. Other game designers joined the competition, and hundreds more games came out in the next few years.

The American Classic Arcade Museum in New Hampshire claims to have the last Pong game that still works, if anybody still wants to play it.

Death Race hit the street just after the cult movie Death Race 2000 (1975) with Sylvester Stallone. It provided the games industry with its first media controversy. The National Safety Council called the game “sick and morbid,” seconded by a tsktsk from the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes.

Players competed at driving through a cemetery, trying to run down “gremlins” - tiny stick figures that could represent pretty much anything, ants or people. The pedestrians screamed, “ Eeeee-yah!”

Dragon’s Lair (1983) upped the game with superior graphics. Dirk the Daring took sword in hand to rescue the princess. The quest led players through a series of cartoon snippets that were animated by former Disney artist Don Bluth.

Pac-Man started chasing ghosts in 1980. In 1999, Billy Mitchell of the United States was the first to log a perfect Pac-Man score of 3,333,360, according to Guinness World Records.

In 2010, the record book named Pac-Man the most recognizable video game character - famous, but still hungry.