
Tennis for Two was an electronic game developed in 1958 on an analog computer - curtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two
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andy_wrote
If you live in NY, you can play this at a currently ongoing exhibit about the
history of computing in New York at the NY Historical Society.

(Review: I would say the exhibit was decent, though not great - might not be
much new for people already familiar with computing history, and it's very
clearly sponsored by IBM, though you could argue that this is not unfair for a
history of NY-area computing. There's also a fun little exhibit on comic book
heroes at the museum, plus I'd never been there before, maybe all added
together it's worth a ticket.)

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mch82
I played Tennis for Two yesterday at the New York Historical Society museum,
nyhistory.org, where it's part of the Silicon City exhibition,
[http://nyhistory.org/exhibition/silicon-city-computer-
histor...](http://nyhistory.org/exhibition/silicon-city-computer-history-made-
new-york)

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rocky1138
I've always been confused by this game. How do players know when to strike the
ball when they can't see their paddle on the screen?

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qbrass
It's not like Pong where you have to line the paddle up with the ball. You can
hit the ball as soon as it crosses onto your side of the court, using a
button. You use the knob to change the angle you hit the ball at. Hitting
downward increases the speed of the ball, but increases your chances of
hitting the net.

~~~
rocky1138
Couldn't someone just win by pressing the button the second it crosses the net
and never letting the ball reach the edge of the screen?

~~~
qbrass
Ideally you could. But because the speed of the ball changes with the angle
you hit it, you can throw off your opponents timing and cause them to mess up.

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anigbrowl
If this takes your fancy you may want to interest yourself in modular audio
synthesis, whether analog or the DSP emulation (an easier and cheaper way to
get into it). There's a whole bunch of oscilloscope-friendly patches for
Clavia's Nord Modular software that implement primitive videogames, including
a working version of _Asteroids_.

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madengr
Here is the original schematic:

[http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/2011/01/24/so-you-
wanna-r...](http://scienceblogs.com/brookhaven/2011/01/24/so-you-wanna-
rebuild-one-of-th/)

There is a clone using a microcontroller, but I won't link to that
abomination.

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curtis
This video looks like it might be of the original game, rather than a re-
creation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PG2mdU_i8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PG2mdU_i8k).

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johansch
Is there a video somewhere? The only one I found required the RealPlayer
plugin :). (Shudder.)

