In the pantheon of video game history, few names carry as much weight as Pong . It was the spark that ignited the arcade revolution in 1972. Yet, for a console that defined the early home market—the Atari 2600 (released in 1977 as the VCS)—the official version of Pong arrived surprisingly late and under a different name.
There is a famous bug in the Video Olympics ROM. In the "Foozpong" variation, if both players move their paddles to the extreme top or bottom at the exact same frame, the ball will shoot horizontally across the screen at infinite speed, ignoring collision detection. Speedrunners and glitch-hunters still pull this ROM apart for its simple, exploitable code.
Pong cannot be played correctly with a joystick. The Video Olympics ROM supports the Atari 2600’s paddle controllers (the twisting dials). Unlike emulated mouse controls or keyboard taps, a real emulator setup (like Stella) paired with a USB paddle simulates the analog drift of the original arcade game. The ROM’s programming handles the "jitter" of old analog potentiometers perfectly.
The ROM is widely available as "Video Olympics (1977) (Atari).bin." Legally, you should own a physical copy of the cartridge, but given its ubiquity and age, it remains one of the most preserved pieces of software in gaming history.