pong
I've always loved Italian design and wondered why it seems like everything designed in Italy is beautiful. I've started to study this and along the way got distracted by early videogame consoles. I of course knew about Pong, but I didn't know that there were numerous Pong-like games designed and sold around the world in the pre-cartridge days.
This fascination started with the ping-o-tronic, which I ran across during my aforementioned studies of Italian design. The games themselves are the sort of ball-and-paddles games you'd expect but the external design of the hardware is quintessentially Italian.
Under the hood the original version was built from a little discreet 7400 series logic and a lot of analog electronics. Later iterations used a sort of "pong-system-on-a-chip", the AY-3-8500.
There were a number of game systems based around this chip (chipset?), but my favorite turns out to be the East German Bildschirmspiel 01.
Not only does it have an awesome name, but there's just something about the "German-ness" of a machine intended for entertainment that I love.
For reasons I can't explain this has inspired me to take a swing at designing my own take of game console based on these chips. I haven't settled on a design just yet, but I want to do something whose physical form draws from my own culture and put a spin on the standard games that reflects something personal as well. If this infatuation lasts long enough to yield any results, I'll certainly share them.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026