When SexyPissedOffPants finds out that a 34 year old trademark comes back from the dead to haunt the sexiest game she’s every seen, she decides to make some noise.
Inside:
- Holy god above, my mind exploded just thinking about its awesomeness.
- At a point you don’t even care about the damn ball, you just want to play with the colours to make it look even more beautiful.
- There is no reason for you to extend you sweaty puny legal iguana* into Plasma Pong’s tight sugary banana tree.
First of all, let me start by introducing you to this amazing game called PlasmaPong. Remember that ooooold game where you moved two ugly little green (or white) paddles with an equally ugly green (or white) ball bouncing between them? Ok, lets see if this brings back memories:
Ah yes that game. It was probably one of the first games to have ever been made, and well it’s pretty boring right? Now imagine that very same game being integrated with a real-time computational fluid dynamics solver. Wait, let me run that by you again… A COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS SOLVER. Holy god above, my mind exploded just thinking about its awesomeness.
The guy who made this game basically set the entire pong game in a very realistically modelled fluid ‘chamber’. When you move your paddles, you can create a spinning vortex or inject extra fluid into your “chamber” and create flows. The ball moves in this fluid, pushed around by it. The objective of the game is the same, you have to get it past your opponents paddle. And the best part is that it’s brilliantly coloured, so it looks stunning. At a point you don’t even care about the damn ball, you just want to play with the colours to make it look even more beautiful. Coupled with some good music, it’s just an excellent way for you to waste hours on end. I can post some pictures, but it has no comparision to actually playing the game. But just as a matter of completeness, here’s a good YouTube video: , and a screenshot:
Yesterday, I wanted to show my friend this game, I Google it and visit the website. Look what I find:
Pong is a registered trademark of Atari Interactive Inc. To respect this trademark, Plasma Pong will be down until further notice.
GAAAAH!!!! NOOOOO! This game is just too good to meet such an untimely end. After a long 2 minute slew of swearing at the top of my voice cursing Atari in every way mentionable (and several that aren’t), I, being irrationally over-emotional about it, decide for the first time in my life to write hate mail. So I went to the feedback section (which for some reason was French by default), and entered the following details (some names have been edited to make it suitable for public viewing):
Prenom (Name): SexyPissed
Nom (Last Name): OffPants
Addresse (Address): 3:16 Futrez-ville
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Foutrez-vous batardes. Pong was a crappy game. Plasma pong was one of the most awesome games ever, and it extends beyond anything your impotent imagination could ever envision. There is no reason for you to extend your sweaty puny legal iguana* into Plasma Pong’s tight sugary banana tree*. Basically you suck sweaty llama balls…* Names changed
I’m just fumed at why something like this has to happen. I understand that some Atari employee’s worked their asses off 30 years ago to make Pong, but to come back now and claim rights is just outrageous. Today, Pong is far too simple of a game to make. Hell, I can (and have) make the game myself, and so can thousands of people using Flash or something. This remake of Pong is far too distinct and unique that Atari can claim patents/copyrights on it. As for using the name, every one comes up with a pong remake (SuperPong, Pong3D, The Return of Pong). Time for some statistics. Let’s look at the number of hits for Pong on various sites:
Google (for the heck of it): 28,700,000
Download.com: 69
Open Directory Project: 202
SourceForge: 94
Riiight. And PlasmaPong is an infringement on Atari’s trademark (though I must be honest and say that I had expected a lot more results). There’s got to be some expiry date on these things. I have a lot more fuming examples of where copyrights are just screwed, but I’ll spare you all, and end this post here. Beware… I’ll be back.
P.S. Thanks to the Internet, there are copies of this game scatter all around. Try it out at: Download.com