January 4, 2026
Serve, volley, discourse
The First Video Game Came Long Before Pong
A bored physicist beat Pong to the punch — and fans are feuding over who was first
TLDR: Years before Pong, physicist William Higinbotham built “Tennis for Two” for fun on a lab display. The comments split between sharing docs and DIY rebuilds and debating what “first video game” really means, showing how definitions and credit still spark passion in gaming history.
Move over, Pong: the comments are crowning a lab-born classic. Readers are buzzing over William Higinbotham’s 1958 “Tennis for Two,” a simple tennis game built on a lab screen, long before arcades blinked to life. Some are sharing receipts, like a link to the acclaimed Ahoy documentary, while others flex DIY cred with modern rebuilds and gripes about oscilloscope quirks. The vibe? Nerdy nostalgia meets credit wars.
The biggest spat isn’t whether Higinbotham did it—it's what counts as “first.” One camp says the key is “made purely for fun,” putting Tennis for Two on the podium. Another waves earlier lab demos and research projects, insisting “first” is messier than a Pong paddle. Meanwhile, analog vs. digital purists pop in to nitpick whether an oscilloscope is a “video display,” because of course it’s the internet.
Amid the bickering, there’s wholesome love for the story: a bored scientist, a gravity slider, and a line-drawn ball that basically invented boredom-busting. Jokes fly about “Pong walked so Fortnite could run” and “the first LAN party was two lab coats deep.” And yes, hands-on tinkerers are rebuilding it today—proving that the oldest drama in gaming is who gets credit, and who brings the soldering iron.
Key Points
- •Tennis for Two (1958) by William Higinbotham is widely considered the first computer game created purely for entertainment.
- •The game ran on an analog computer and displayed gameplay on an oscilloscope, using custom controllers to set shot angles and hit the ball.
- •Higinbotham conceived the game to engage visitors at a Brookhaven National Laboratory exhibit and demonstrate science’s societal relevance.
- •Early commercial gaming milestones followed later: Computer Space (1971), Pong (1972), and the Magnavox Odyssey (1972).
- •Higinbotham, a WWII electronics expert and nonproliferation advocate, died in 1994; he preferred recognition for radar and policy work but is remembered for pioneering video games.