Konami’s Ping Pong, Arcade

Konami’s Ping Pong was the first video game to accurately reflect the gameplay of table tennis, rather than earlier simplifications like Pong. It was first released into arcades in 1985.

The game can be played by one or two players, and at five different skill levels (one being the lowest). Players are represented by disembodied hands floating above the table. In single-player mode you play against the CPU and always stay at the bottom of the table, facing upwards. In two-player mode you play against a friend (or a stranger, if you’re that way inclined), and you take it in turns to play at the top and bottom every five points.

The controls are extremely simple: left, right and two buttons. Button one switches from forehand to backhand when you hold it down, and button two starts a serve and can also be used in-game to lob, cut or smash the ball. You don’t have to worry about positioning the paddle when the ball comes toward you – the game does that for you – you simply push left or right to make a swing at the ball.

Konami’s Ping Pong uses the ‘eleven point’ scoring rules. The first player to reach a score of eleven or higher – leading by two clear points – wins the game (to a maximum of 14-14, in which case the next point wins). The player must win two out of three games in order to win the match.

The key thing with Konami’s Ping Pong is to get into the rhythm of play and to avoid swinging the paddle too early (or too late), which is easy to do. You have to watch the height and movement of the ball as it comes toward you and time your swing appropriately.

Another key thing is to know when to switch from forehand to backhand. Basically, when the ball is nearing the edges of the table you need to work out how to hit it back across the table diagonally, and you need to switch handedness to do that. Otherwise you’ll invariably hit the ball wide. If you’re good you can surprise your opponent and smash the ball back along the edge of the table again, but that’s much harder to do as the shot has to be very precise. I did manage that on occasion, though.

Play is fast and furious and rallies can be intense – just like real table tennis – and Konami’s Ping Pong does take a bit of practise to get the hang of. By the time you get to the third skill level of play you’ll have to react very quickly to return the ball, never mind win a point, and you’ll also have to learn how to return a smash, because the CPU will start doing them more frequently. The fourth and fifth skill levels are for pros only because the CPU will start mixing normal, hard and slow shots, which are much harder to return.

While the game won’t be for everyone, there will undoubtedly be people who love Konami’s Ping Pong and are really good at it. Personally, I think that it’s an excellent game – if extremely challenging – and I don’t think there’s a better table tennis video game out there (not that I’ve seen anyway).

An MSX cartridge version of Ping Pong was released in Japan in 1985 by Konami themselves, and a series of highly-regarded home computer ports were released by Ocean Software (on the Imagine label) in Europe in 1986. In 1987 the game was ported to the Famicom Disk System in Japan as “Smash Ping Pong“, and was published by Nintendo.