Pips Pong

Pips Pong is a homebrew game by Mr Pips released on 01 July 1998. As its name implies, it’s another Pong-style tennis game, but this time it’s in 3D.

You can download the game from its download page here by using the password pipmypong.

About Pips Pong

Pong is one of those games that can always work well as a first attempt at making a game because of its simplicity, and Mr Pips attempted to do just that. Of course there are other people who made their own version of Pong on the Nintendo 64 like Omsk or Oman, but even though Pips Pong was released a year later, it’s the only one that has 3D graphics.

Its one of the games i have made in the past week, I also have been working on arkranoid and zaxxont. Then for summer64 I dont know if ill join that, But pom99 sounds nice 🙂

I had a kick ass intro too, But somethen got fucked up. Piptendo intro was ditched as well, lots of things ditched, sorry if the game sucks to bad and Well it Did take awhile for a minor coder like me to make:) o well. try it out its quite boring after awhile who hasnt played pong? (Hint: Put controllers in port 2 and 3) use analog up and down for menu/game, analog left and right in the options menu (you wont be able to see your selection) and b to get out of the options menu and start on the main menu (start/options menu)

MrPips

The pong game is simple as usual: Avoid missing the ball for a high score. You move the paddle up and down while the ball moves between the two players. It really is that simple. You can play against another player or as a single player vs and AI.

You can adjust some settings, but the settings section doesn’t have any visual feedback and it tends to crash when you try to return to the main screen so it’s best to proceed with the default settings. What is also kind of weird is that Pips Pong doesn’t use ports 1&2 to control the menu and paddles, but rather controller ports 2&3. I’ve never seen this before in any game, homebrew or retail.

Review and conclusion

While Pips Pong is the most graphically impressive game of Pong, I wouldn’t say that it’s the most fun to play. Fist off it’s extremely slow by default and I can’t change the setting without the game crashing. There is also no momentum in the ball so it will always deflect based on how far it was from the centre of the paddle upon impact. Finally, the AI player always moves to hit the ball with its centre so you’re almost always going to get a perfectly horizontal movement.

While its not a particularly fun game to play, Mr. Pips does say that it is an incomplete game in the description so it does deserve a little bit of slack. And as a first foray into making a 3D project after Piptendo, I must say that it’s a pretty good first attempt.