Holy
Sure, Pong is fun and all by itself, but what if there were asteroids in the middle of the field too?
(A chapter of Purposeful Glitches, a weekly series exploring intentional actions and their unintentional effects within the space of classic arcade games.)
I really like the concept, but the bouncing seems to be off (the ball bounces off of the paddles in the same direction it was coming from WAY too often) which caused me to quit after only a few minutes.
Yeah, I know. That darn ball. Even after I tweaked my original the code and raised the chance of it switching directions over 50%, it still seems to repeat too often.
All of these weekly projects are mostly more concept than execution. It’s taking silly questions like “What if Pac-Man could eat the level too?” or “What if the explosions in Missile Command never went away?” and making them real. I like to think of them as flash fiction: a quick glimpse into how a game like this might work as an exercise in developing a working prototype of a concept.