Ever spent an afternoon pondering the inherent deficiencies of arcade classic Pong? Ever said to yourself in a flash of inspiration, “What this seminal bat battler really needs is jokes! And dungeons! And a paddle with a moustache!”? If so, congratulations! You are Atari and have just invented Pong Quest, the newly announced “hilarious” dungeon crawling spin on the legendary arcade game, coming to pretty much everything this spring.
Pong Quest – which, as far as I can tell, is the first official new outing for the series since 2012’s Pong World – casts players as a “cheerful and adorable” Pong paddle, as it embarks on a vaguely RPG-like adventure to save the world from imminent destruction.
What that amounts to in gameplay terms is a bit of exploratory dungeon roaming – each new area is said to be loosely themed around classic Atari properties, including Asteroids and Centipede – with enemy encounters being resolved through spiced-up Pong battles, with over 50 Pong ball varieties adding “new depths and strategy”.
