Since its launch at the start of the year, the Atari Pong Indie Developer Challenge has courted some controversy. Mostly down to the company’s ownership of entered game ideas even for non-winners. That’s something that’s not going to be a huge issue for the following seven entrants, however. They’ve made it to the final!

Each of these developers is guaranteed a three-year revenue-sharing publishing agreement along with a cash price, which will be awarded based upon their final ranking. The first place winner is set to gain $50,000 for their contribution.

Here’s the line up of games competing:

RetroPong from PegPeg
Up to four players can compete in this Pong game with each player starting with a number of lives. Single player brings with it a history mode.

Pong Tournament 2012 from Delusions
Offering crisp graphics, retro themed arenas for its round robin style tournament mode and multi touch functionality, this game should bring Pong to the 21st century.

Pong Evo from Island Officials
Introducing an unique power up system, 5 game types and visual flare, Pong Evo looks set to be quite a reboot.

Pong 4033 from Fishbowl Productions
Pong 4033 uses gestures rather than a paddle to control movement, along with a selection of power mods.

Pong World from zGames
Supplying new game modes, levels and upgradeable paddles with active and passive boosts, all added to the original game’s core mechanics.

Fong from Eppy Game
No longer restricted to a sharp edged screen, Fong offers the Pong expeirence in a circlular arena with goal targets to aim at and emoting paddles.

Pong Tournament from MadRuse Games
Steal energy from your opponent to buy defensive upgrades and special abilities to help succeed in this Pong remix.

The winner will be announced August 2, having been selected in part by a celebrity judging panel made up of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Dave Castelnuovo, David Whatley, and Mike Schramm. All of the finalists will enjoy a commercial release.

Atari has come a long way over the last forty years.  The once storied console manufacturer has gone through several different permutations over the past four decades, finally settling into the role of publisher.  As of late the company has taken a significant amount of flack from independent iOS developers that have had their games yanked off of the App Store due to similarities to classic Atari franchises like Battlezone and Breakout.  While the company was completely within their rights to have the titles in question removed, they have extended an olive branch to the independent developer scene in the form of their ‘Pong Indie Developer Challenge.’

The competition encourages independent App Store developers to come up with their own re-envisioning of the Pong franchise, for a chance at winning a share of over $100,000 in cash prizes.  If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, Atari has sweetened the pot, promising revenue sharing for the winning developers for up to three years.  With prizes like that on the line, it may be time to brush up on those iOS development skills.  Be sure to hurry, though, submissions are due by April 15th!

Popular Universal game MultiPong is free at the moment and for a very good reason – developers Fingerlab has released the soundtrack for the game onto iTunes.

Priced at $2.76 for all four tracks, the MultiPong OST offers the best music from the game with each track specially edited and rearranged for soundtrack purposes.

For the uninitiated MultiPong is a great physics based reimagining of the Pong way of gaming. Players must compete to defeat each other while the solo mode offers up a competitive AI opponent.

The graphical style keeps to a wooden board style appearance with the iPad version allowing up to 4 player multiplayer at once and the iPhone offering up to 2 players. With 7 different game modes ranging from classic to baby, crazy, flash and death ball, as well as a plethora of different bonuses, it makes for a pretty thrilling game that’s well worth a look.

Get MultiPong now while it’s free.

$2.99

$6.99

Multiponk

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2010-06-10 :: Category: Games