Well, there’s a question I’ll bet you’ve never asked yourself. Don’t worry, me neither.

But someone out there on the internet did.

Pong of course is the arcade videogame that started it all – every video game that has come since, was birthed out of Pong, which also happens to be 50 years old this year.

Atari’s 50th anniversary has been well documented, including here on the blog a couple of times this year. Check out the video in this recent post for very early footage of Pong cabinets being built on Atari’s factory floor.

Pong was the industry’s first commercially successful videogame. “Avoid missing ball for high score” was all people needed to know to enjoy gaming. Simple and clear instructions that informed people how to interact with this new entertainment medium.

Read up on the creation of Pong in this excellent article by Benj Edwards here.

Which leads us to the question asked in the title of this post: What if Pong was a Sci-Fi movie? This was a question that Graphic Designer (amongst other things) Johnny Darrell asked himself recently.

To explore this idea, Johnny used an AI tool called MidJourney. This tool takes concepts suggested by the user, then makes them a reality, via an interactive bot. In a process that took months, MidJourney was ‘shown’ a huge number of images. It then trained itself to make connections, associating the images with words that describe them.

When MidJourney is prompted by a user, the connections work like a brain remembering something. It starts with generating random noise (like an old TV with no signal) and over time looks for patterns in the noise that trigger the connections it has made, changing the noise to match what it thinks should be there. Slowly it “imagines” or “hallucinates” an image out of the noise. In reality, this all happens in seconds.

And so in simple terms, you tell the system what you want to see, and MidJourney will literally generate unique and artistic images that are in tune with what you’ve requested, based on its previous knowledge and learnings. What is presented back to the user are creative, bespoke images, generated using Midjourney’s artificial intelligence.

So when Johnny wanted to generate AI images to show what a film based on the videogame Pong might look like, this is what came back. The result is so remarkable, I had to share them here on the blog:

Click an image to view them in a larger lightbox:

How cool are these? Entirely generated by AI in a Stanley Kubrick late-70s style sci-fi style. The sense of a dystopian Pong world is remarkable. The images bring to mind movies of the era like THX1138, Logan’s Run, Bladerunner and 2001: A Space Odessey.

Johnny even mocked up a movie poster to go with the images:

A slightly leftfield post this week, but I’m sure you’ll agree, one worth sharing with you all!

Huge thanks to Johnny Darrell for allowing me to share these amazing images here on the blog. You can check out more of Johnny’s work here.

See you next time.

Tony

Looking for a cool retro gaming read for Xmas this year? Check out my book, Missile Commander: