Firefox is more than just a web browser. It’s also a cross-platform arcade machine. No quarters necessary.

An ode to Ralph H. Baer

I owe much of my life to Ralph H. Baer. Oh, he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t even know me. But that’s how it goes in these days. Much of life is owed to strangers.

If you want a measure of success, I will give you a yardstick: wasted time. Or rather, leisure time. Ralph H. Baer has given many of us a legacy of time spent in front of a television, twiddling white squares around with a paddle. So it is Ralph H. Baer is a very successful man.

In 1969, Ralph H. Baer invented Pong [1]. Doing so, he invented video games.

I’ve sacrificed months of my life on the alter of video games since Dad and Mom purchased the family’s first Pong game back in 1977, a Sears model with detachable paddles.

Blame the rainy Thorne Bay winters. Blame my budding geekness. Wherever blame may be placed, I wasted hours of my life irretrievably to those little white squares and the harsh electronic ping of the square ball.

I’m obviously not the only one.

There is a dictum among developers that the first program written for any new platform is “Hello, World”. There is a second dictum that the second program written must be Pong. These mandates are ignored at the programmer’s peril, though nobody really likes Pong. It’s just how things are done. Maybe we are simply trying to recapture the wonder of our childhood. If so, there’s entirely too much nostalgia in the world.

The Firefox extensions window

The games

Pong!

In the world of Firefox, there are not one, but two versions of Pong. Both offer the same great gameplay. One has the added advantage of using a square ball. The other includes the ability to play against others in an on-line Pong deathmatch.

Eduardo Garcia Lopez is responsible for PingPong 0.7, a simple implementation of the classic game, replete with nostalgic touches such as the square ball and hard-to-control paddles. I bow to you, Eduardo. Your love of old games surpasses mine.

Eduardo is not the only one to turn my more-or-less modern computer into the 1969 equivalent of a wooden box full of a handful of tubes and a pound of copper wire. Captain Caveman has devoted hours of his or her life to develop the finely-crafted PONG! Multiplayer 2.2. The good Captain’s effort has turned out a slightly more modern version of the game, with an octogon of a ball, and sound, and smoother paddle movement. There is ostensibly an on-line component of the game, but tales of my mad, mad PONG! skillz precede me. I have yet to find a challenger in the two times I checked the lobby.

In the end, they are still just Pong. Both games attempt to take up residence in that empty pit where my childhood innocence once stood, wide-eyed with a paddle in its hand. Those times are passed, though, and now Pong just doesn’t suit. It’s like playing Aztec on an Apple ][ emulator. The memory of Pong is stronger than Pong itself.

In the end, they are still just Pong

Pacman

In the long-ago, far-away years of the video arcade, no game captured the hearts and quarters of boys and girls like Pacman. Part of it was the mystery—who was this man of the Pac? Represented by a chomping circle of yellow, Pacman wore an eternal expression of mild amusement as he alternately ran from, and then toward, the evil quartet of ghosts. He typified the American dream: scarf pills and fruits while running from impossible fears, until the terrifying moment when he is touched by a ghost and the wedge of his mouth eats his own head.

I still have nightmares.

There are two Firefox options for this classic game. The first is Ingo Oppermann’s Pacman 1.1.0. Mr. Oppermann has gone for the 286-era computer game feel, rather than the realistic arcade experience. The graphics are rudimentary, the gameboards lack the tunnels of the original game, and the sound effects are present but elementary. This was a wise decision on his part. Arcades were highly overrated. The game has a simple, clean feel to it, and is quite playable.

The second is the manlier PagMan 1.0, by mackers. Mackers has given a silent but sturdy reproduction of the original arcade game. The movement is a little choppy, but the game is both visually appealing and true to the original. I do miss the intermission chase scenes, though, and the tinny, synthetic music that has been emulated by the likes of Ms. Pacman, The Postal Service, and that guy who did Pacman Fever.

All-in-all, both Pacman variants are worth a good ten minutes of playtime, at a minimum.