In 2019 researchers at Berlin’s Computer Games Museum made an extraordinary discovery: a rudimentary Pong console, made from salvaged electronics and plastic soap-box enclosures for joysticks. The beige rectangular tupperware that contained its wires would, when connected to a TV by the aerial, bring a serviceable Pong copy to the screen.
At the time, they thought the home-brewed device was a singular example of ingenuity behind the iron curtain. But earlier this year they found another Seifendosen-Pong (“soap-box Pong”), along with a copy of a state-produced magazine called FunkAmateur containing schematics for a DIY variety of Atari’s 1970s gaming sensation.
