We have been following the progress of the Atari PONG Table, from Kickstarter coffee table, to full-blown coin-op game machines, for a few years now. Back before the pandemic, there was one new variation of the concept that was aiming to land in arcades last summer, but that roll-out had to be delayed for an additional year(excepting a roll-out to Dave & Busters, although I am not sure how extensive that was). The variation was a 4-player version of the game that UNIS called Atari PONG Knockout. Here’s what that looked like at IAAPA 2019:
If you’re unable to watch the video right now, it is pretty much Atari’s Quadrapong, but done in the same electro-mechanical manner as the 2-player units. It also made use of a game announcer, an overhead marquee, and some effects added to the paddles/ball. You can see all of the differences between the commercial model’s thanks to this handy chart that was included in the UNIS June newsletter:
As the headline to this post said, and also mentioned by the chart above, this game is shipping out to interested arcades and other buyers, with stock available in the US and Canada. It is available as a card swipe or coin-op game, each player side having a payment acceptor; It also has tickets as an option. The game isn’t showing up on the UNIS website as of this writing, but you can find a brochure for it here in case you’d like to get more detail.
If you’ve had a chance to play this one already, what did you think about it?
