I’ve been on the look out for Pong machines recently, mainly to train my skills before the yearly Swedish Championships of Pong that takes place each year at Retrogathering ^_^ I’ve been attempting to compete since 2014, but haven’t had anything to train on except my Philips Odyssey 2001, which has a quite different feeling than the original Atari Pong console. While scouting for an Atari Pong, like the ones they use in the competition I stumbled upon this beauty on eBay! It was so cheap and yet beautiful that I couldn’t help but buy it ^_^
I’ve never heard of the Ajax TV Games before, it’s from the UK, or at least that’s where I bought it from. It was complete, the box is a bit tattered but the console is in excellent condition! Shining white! It’s also so stylish and well designed! It can run on batteries or a power adaptor (which wasn’t included), and all the outputs for antenna and other chords plus the battery container is hidden behind a sleek compartment where you could also store the controllers, because they’re so tiny! Just look at this beauty ^_^
“Most exciting…fascinating home video games ever built
for your family.”
The controllers really are tiny, one of the controllers is a liiiittle bit slower to turn than the other, but they both work fine. I tried it out for the first time today :)
The machine itself has loads of settings! You can turn the sound on and off, it comes straight from the system and is basically just beeps for when the ball hits the paddle. You can change angles between +-20°/40° or just +-20°, I guess this is how the ball will fly when it hits the edge of a paddle. There’s also two different speeds, H and L, High and Low I guess. You can choose between Auto serve or Manual and you can also set the bat size (the size of the paddle) between L and S, Large and Small.
Apart from this there’s 4 various game modes to choose from, Tennis, Hockey, Handball or Practice mode :)
This sucker takes no less than 6 C batteries to play!!!! Hahaha ^_^ I need to get an adaptor…
When I first tried finding the channel I had trouble. Two of my TVs refused to find it. The second one scrolled through a tuning that looked perfect, but refused to stop there, if I forced it to stop there it went bad again.. and whenever it did stop everything on the screen was warped like I was seeing double.. Eventually I got it working on the third TV though, luckily I have many TVs ;D
Here are the four variations of Pong that can be played on the Ajax TV Game :) I find Tennis to be the most fun one. Handball was kind of different though, I’ve never seen it before on a Pong machine. You take turns on hitting the ball, it gets a bit confusing to see which one is you or who’s turn it is. If the wrong paddle tries to hit it the ball just goes straight through. I would call this squash.. not handball.. XD
I didn’t have anyone to battle with so it was my left hand VS my right hand! (I’m right handed), but I recorded some gameplay of the Ajax TV Game, the first video is a game of Tennis on slow setting, and I was amazed at which hand came out victorious! It was hard focusing on turning the wheel in mirrored ways since I had it in two different hands XD The second video is of first Tennis on high speed and then some Hockey and Handball so anyone who’s interested can see how those look as well :) It was extremely difficult just controlling the paddle with one thumb!
The Ajax TV game system is a great addition to the collection! So pretty and works like a charm! Now I just need to find myself the original Pong console! ^_^
Retro Video Gaming 