To one person, an original prototype of an Atari ‘Home Pong’ video game console by Allan Alcorn was worth $270,910 USD (RR Auction). This one-of-a-kind piece of gaming history was built with a finished Pong chip in a prototype circuit board in the base that measures 20″ x 9.5″ x 8.25″, complete with a hand-carved wooden mockup of the game console set atop the large black box. This mockup has two potentiometer paddle control knobs, a red ‘start game’ push button, and a central metal grille for the built-in speaker.
Some of the design elements on the prototype, including its three-part layout to the angled control panel surfaces, can be seen on the production models of ‘Home Pong,’ beginning with the Sears Tele-Games (1975) and subsequent Atari Pong Model C-100 (1976). The box contains all of its electronics and is powered by an AC adapter sporting an on/off toggle switch on one side. This was actually the one of two Home Pong prototypes hand-built by Atari used to show to potential customers.
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I had never designed a custom chip before but I had an engineer, Harold Lee, with me who did have the experience and we managed to get the chip to work. I mistakenly thought that designing the chip would be the hardest part of the project but to my surprise the plastic case wound up taking longer and costing more money than the chip. We eventually did get the plastic to finished but in order to demonstrate the product to potential customers like Sears we had to demo it with a handmade wooden mockup of what the finish case would look like. 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,” said Alcorn.