Pong is getting a "creative sequel" in which you play the ball
OK, so unlike Gollum this does seem pretty swish. I am getting pungent whiffs of Labyrinth Zone, and there are some nice single-screen Pac-Man-meets-Celeste puzzle setups in there. It feels like a fleshed-out version of an entry to last year's PongJam, hosted by Digital Extremes technical designer Scott Melanson, which gave us such wonders as Turn-Based Pong and Pong meets the Iranian Revolution. The logical plotline here is surely for the left paddle to return as the final boss.
It definitely feels more like a thinly rebranded Qomp sequel than a Pong game, however, which speaks to modern-day Atari's rather cynical handling of the Atari license and back catalogue. "The creature wearing the skin of Atari mostly makes stupid junk I don't care about," Alice0 observed in a piece on Atari's acquisition of community-run database MobyGames. "It can trade on other people's glories by spaffing off blockchain rubbish and hotels that won't get built and bad microconsoles and endless re-releases with the logo and rights it bought, and I'll think it's stupid but basically not care (aside from that cryptojunk, which is abhorrent)."
Stuffed Wombat, at least, have said they're "really excited to see how Atari is carrying our work forward". You might also be interested in this Pong homage from Bennett "Getting Over It" Foddy.
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