Atari’s ‘Home Pong’ prototype fetches more than $270K at auction

It might be called the grandfather of the PS5. An original prototype of Atari’s “Home Pong” unit from 1975 sold for $270,910 at an auction this month.

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The video game -- one of the first produced and the first to be commercially successful -- was sold by Boston-based RR Auction. The winning bid includes a buyer’s premium.

The prototype, a hand-carved, wood mock-up of the Pong home system, came from the collection of the game’s creator, Allan Alcorn, according to the auction listing. Alcorn, 74, also included a letter of provenance.

The prototype features two paddle control knobs, a red “start game” push button and a metal grille for the built-in speaker, Forbes reported.

Atari released the table tennis-themed arcade game in 1972 and introduced a home system three years later, CNN reported. A home version of the game was distributed in late 1975 by Sears, Roebuck and Co., according to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The Smithsonian has one of the consoles in its collection.

“In 1975, Atari had managed to become dominant in the coin-operated entertainment business and moved on to build video games for the home market,” Alcorn wrote in his provenance letter. “We had to get Pong running on a single chip of silicon so a product could be built at a price a consumer could afford.

“The wooden mockup was attached to a box that had the electronics in the base and did look and function pretty much like the finished Pong game.”

The game is one of two prototypes Atari used to show potential customers, according to Forbes. The other, a coin-operated model, is housed in the permanent collection of the Computer History Museum.

Alcorn was the third employee at Atari, hired after Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney co-founded the company, Forbes reported.

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