Pong is Trademarked - Play Canvas Paddle Ball

A simple game where two lines pass a pixel sized ball back and forth is commonly known as Pong. To this day that name is trademarked by Atari. However, the patent on electronic table tennis held by Sanders Associates long expired. Thus, anyone can make a Pong clone, but no one can legally call it Pong.

Please enjoy my rendition of the classic: click here to play.

Commentary

I needed a project that can highlight by programming ability in JavaScript. I chose to make pong tennis as it seemed like a fun and simple project. It is also somewhat of a remake of something I made back from when I was teenager using Scratch.

There many different computer opponents to unlock, with unique and increasingly advanced strategies. The game is well tested for modern browsers and devices. I will note that Safari on iOS gave me the most trouble. There’s a couple quirks with iPhone’s web browsers where you can’t make the game go fullscreen and sound volume can’t be dynamically controlled.

The game can be downloaded from the web browser (Ctrl+S), and played without an internet connection.

The source code is available here: https://codeberg.org/CaffeinatedCPU/CanvasPaddleBall/

Credits

Written by Victor Efimov

Published on April 8, 2025