10 Completely Shameless Video Game Rip-Offs
3. Pong - Table Tennis
This sounds very obvious. Pong is basically a digital version of tennis/table tennis with the rules stripped back to their most basic, but I'm not referring to the physical game of tennis. Pong may be hailed as one of the first video games ever, but even the grandfather of gaming took its base mechanics from something else.
Video game pioneer, Ralph Baer, had been working on making TV games since the early 1950's and finally realised his dream in 1972 when Table Tennis was completed and released to the public. A few pixels, a line in the centre and a travelling ball were revolutionary at the time, but it fell by the wayside thanks to Atari.
The company's founder came across Table Tennis thanks to the Magnavox Odessey's publicity tour, and realised the world wasn't quite ready for home video games consoles due to their hefty price tags. Thus, Atari turned Table Tennis into an arcade machine and renamed it 'Pong', making millions over the following years.
Magnavox would go on to sue Atari and win their case, but then foolishly asked for a one time licence fee to be paid, rather than asking Atari to continue supporting their idea. Atari paid up and were worth $2 billion ten years later - you literally couldn't make this stuff up.