From Pong to Wii Sports: the ​surprising ​legacy of ​tennis in ​gaming ​history

With Wimbledon under way, I am going to grasp the opportunity to make a perhaps contentious claim: tennis is the most important sport in the history of video games.

Sure, nowadays the big sellers are EA Sports FC, Madden and NBA 2K, but tennis has been foundational to the industry. It was a simple bat-and-ball game, created in 1958 by scientist William Higinbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, that is widely the considered the first ever video game created purely for entertainment. Tennis for Two ran on an oscilloscope and was designed as a minor diversion for visitors attending the lab’s annual open day, but when people started playing, a queue developed that eventually extended out of the front door and around the side of the building. It was the first indication that computer games might turn out to be popular.

I’ve been unable to find out if Ralph Baer, the inventor of the first mass-produced games console, the Magnavox Odyssey, ever played Tennis for Two. However, when he was developing the idea of a TV that could play games, while working at the defence contractor Sanders Associates in the late 1960s, the rudimentary elements of what his prototype consoles could display on screen were vertical lines and square dots. When Magnavox released the product in 1972, its key games were Table Tennis and Tennis (the same as Table Tennis, except you could place a plastic overlay of a tennis court on your TV screen). These allowed two players to bat a ball to each other, adding a little “spin” by flicking the dial on the side of the primitive joypad. This was an extension of the knob on the Tennis for Two controller that let you alter the height of your return shot, but neither game really allowed much in the way of player skill.

From here, of course, we get to Pong, widely considered the first smash hit video arcade game. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell played tennis on the Odyssey and thought he could do better; with programmer Al Alcorn, he divided the onscreen bat into eight areas, each deflecting the ball at a different angle. Here we had the true beginnings of input finesse, a crucial element of all future video games, giving the player room to add skill and timing to their shots. Pong was such a success, Bushnell realised Atari needed a single-player version – hence the 1976 coin-op Breakout, where you hit the ball not at another human participant but at a wall of disappearing bricks. Breakout was effectively a one-player tennis game, and its brilliance had two major ramifications for the video game industry in Japan: it was the first successful release for legendary manufacturer Namco after its purchase of Atari’s Japanese arm in 1974, effectively propelling the company into the video arcade business; Breakout also inspired a game designer named Tomohiro Nishikado, who would use it as the basis of a certain 1978 arcade game, Space Invaders. So you see, tennis is responsible for the entire shoot-em-up genre.

Tennis sims were also vitally important in the early home computer gaming boom of the 1980s. Titles such as Match Point on the ZX Spectrum and International Tennis on the Commodore 64 provided compelling and intuitive two-player experiences that didn’t require a whole team of animated players like footie sims. The accessibility of tennis as a game concept also appealed to Nintendo, with its Tennis, Mario Tennis and Wii Tennis (from Wii Sports) games becoming its most popular sporting titles.

Since then, every generation of consoles has had its staple tennis titles, usually not as big and showy as the football or basketball sims, but always there in the background, perfect for when non-gamers wanted to join in the fun. Namco’s Smash Court, Codemasters’ Pete Sampras Tennis, 2K’s TopSpin and Sega’s Virtua Tennis have added interesting assets to the central concept of hitting a ball over a net, and while they have all sought to simulate a range of surfaces and competitions, it’s the idyllic vision of the Wimbledon grass court that has sold them. In tennis, you have an almost unique set of properties: wide consumer knowledge, an easy-to-understand rule-set married to deep skill mechanics and a highly constrained play space providing concentrated single-screen action.

Would people have queued for hours outside a science research base in Upton, New York, in the autumn of 1958 to play a space blaster or kung fu fighting game? I don’t think so – it would have been unworldly and mystifying to many attenders. Look at Computer Space, the first commercially available space shooter arcade game, released in 1971 (designed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney) – it did modestly well, but it was far from the global success that Pong achieved. The controls were too complicated, the concept too abstract. Tennis was the Trojan horse of the video game industry – it snuck video games into our homes and our amusement arcades, and by the time we realised what had happened, it was too late ever to go back.

What to play

I was going to be predictable and recommend a tennis game here – probably a classic such as Virtua Tennis or Top Spin 4 – but instead I’m going for a different sort of retro treat. Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition is a modern update of what many consider to be the pinnacle of the Worms series, 1999’s Worms Armageddon, a daft multiplayer turn-based battle game where you set out to destroy your enemy’s army of annelids with sheep launchers, banana bombs and … a concrete donkey.

It’s such a ridiculous and funny game, but also requires deep tactical thinking and such a mastery of angles and trajectory it may as well be considered educational software. An update to the game also gives access to previous titles in the series for the Mega Drive and Game Boy. A boisterous bargain.

Available on: PS5, Switch, Xbox
Estimated playtime: 10 hours to 25 years

What to read

• The concern over rising video game prices continues. The BBC has a report talking to one consumer who says: “New video games cost me a whole day’s wages.” Major titles can now cost up to £80, with increased manufacturing and development costs getting the blame – although we should perhaps also be looking at the generous pay packets some industry CEOs are able to command.

• How does Metacritic actually work? GamesIndustry.Biz spoke to its founders about the science of score aggregation. Lots of interesting topics came up, including the phenomenon of game publishers basing staff bonuses on the meta score of their latest projects.

• A few sites, including IGN, have picked up on a recent video from former Xbox exec Laura Fryer on the death of Xbox hardware and what Microsoft’s recent announcement of the ROG Xbox Ally X handheld PC might tell us about its strategy going forward.

What to click

Question Block

This one comes from JohnnyBiscuits:

“Five years ago, many media commentators were adamant that the PS5/Xbox Series X would be the final generation of consoles. What’s the latest thinking?”

As referenced in the What to Read section above, Laura Fryer, an early Xbox employee, has stated that Microsoft is preparing to kill games hardware development in favour of getting its Xbox app on to different platforms. We’ve seen this approach taking shape with the recent ROG Xbox Ally and Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition announcements; Samsung is also making Xbox game streaming a part of its Smart TVs. However, Microsoft has also just announced a multi-year partnership with chip manufacturer AMD, which it stated would include “Future Xbox consoles”. Meanwhile, Sony, which lacks the sort of ecosystems open to Microsoft thanks to Windows, has recently reiterated its commitment to dedicated games consoles, which is unsurprising considering that PS5 has sold around 78m units, and rumours of a third Switch are already swirling. Earlier this month, Switch 2 sold over 3.5m units in its first four days on sale – a record for console hardware.

So no, I don’t think dedicated games consoles are going anywhere soon. They’re convenient, cheaper than buying and maintaining a gaming PC and offer a more stable and reliable experience than streaming games via a set-top box. Also, after five years of increased virtualisation, where we generally don’t own the music we listen to or the movies we watch, there is a growing kickback against digital apps and streaming services – the games console is a desirable object, specifically designed for fun and rife with sentimental memories. It’s illogical really to want a big chunk of plastic and circuit boards to play games on, but when that chunk looks as cool as a Mega Drive, a Neo Geo or a PlayStation 5, it becomes more than just a platform. While we still enjoy visible artefacts that express our likes and tastes, there will be consoles to put next to the TV and gaze at adoringly.

If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

• In last week’s Pushing Buttons, we incorrectly said that the film Walkabout was directed by Peter Weir. In fact, it was directed by Nicolas Roeg.