Video Games are absolutely everywhere these days. On dedicated games consoles, high-end PCs, set-top boxes, TVs, tablets, smartphones, and even dumb phones (who could ever forget Snake, God rest his soul).
Games permeate through our lives so much that you don’t even have to buy or download them in order to enjoy them these days. Because they’re right there on the Web just waiting to be played.
OK, this usually means having to install Adobe Flash on your system, but that’s surely a small price to pay for hours of gaming goodness. Did I say hours? I meant days, weeks even, because there are so many games to play you could easily waste away your life trying to play them all. Which is exactly why Pong.com exists.
Pong.com wants to be the new home of browser-based games, those free Flash games which are currently spread across the Web without any sense of order or meaning. Pong acts as a Pinterest-like platform, with users invited to create boards and add games from around the Web to these categorized collections.
Anyone can play the games posted to Pong, without any need to sign up for an account. These passing visitors can simply click on the game they want to play and, assuming they have Adobe Flash Player installed, they can play away to their heart’s content.
Those who sign up for a Pong.com account can do much more than just play games, gaining the ability to create boards, add games, and interact with other users of the site. But before we get into that, first we have to tackle the tricky subject of Flash, a technology that, despite the hate, still persists.
The myriad games featured on Pong.com all use Adobe Flash, Steve Jobs’ favorite proprietary software. This means anyone who has chosen not to install Flash on their computer will have a hard time using Pong.com. The rest of us would point and laugh, but we’re too busy playing all the games.
Yes, all the games. Because almost every kind of browser-based game you can think of has a home on Pong.com. Regardless of age, personal taste, or skill level, you should be able to find a game to suit you on Pong.
It’s impossible to know how many games are on Pong.com, but I know that I haven’t yet reached the bottom of the endlessly scrolling homepage. Which is why the Popular tab should be your first port of call. As the name suggests, this lists the most popular games available to play on Pong.
Other tabs include Following (showing the games recently added by one of the people you’re following), and New (showing the most recent games added to Pong). There are also a host of default boards such as Retro, Shooter, and Sports & Racing.
Playing a game is as simple as clicking on any of those you see while browsing Pong.com, and assuming you have Flash installed, it will start loading. The length of time it takes to load depends on how big the file is, with graphic-heavy title taking longer than simpler titles such as the classic Pac-Man.
Pac-Man is far from the only classic arcade game available on Pong, with Doom, Street Fighter 2, Paperboy, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, and Tetris also included, to name just a few. There are also weird and wonderful pastiches of classic games such as Super Mario 63 (Super Mario 64), Konkey Dong (Donkey Kong), and Bomb It 6 (Bomberman).
The chances of you ever playing all the games on Pong.com are extremely remote. Even if you did, you’d probably end up wasting away at your computer. And surely no one wants to suffer that fate.
Those people who sign up to Pong.com — either via a valid email address or through Facebook — get some extra elements to enjoy. Once signed in, Pong becomes something more akin to a social network, albeit one based around fun Flash games.
You can follow other users who share similar interests as yourself, find friends, invite friends, or create your own unique boards. Best of all, you can add games from around the Web using the ‘Pong it‘ button which can be added to your Web browser of choice as a bookmarklet. The video below shows how to do this in Google Chrome.
To conclude, Pong.com is a great place to go for Flash games of all descriptions. It provides a simple platform for individuals to collect and collate their favorite games from around the Web, preventing the need to search Google every time you fancy a quick game of Pong. Yes, even Pong is on there… did you really expect anything less?!
With all of that in mind, we now want to know what’s your favorite Flash game of all time? Leave a comment below telling us where we can find it, which will enable everyone reading this, including myself, to add it to Pong.com.
Image Credit: Damien du Toit via Flickr
