Pong (Gong)

Gong is a standalone Pong clone written as a libretro core by Brad Parker. It recreates the classic 1972 arcade game — two paddles, one ball, and simple score tracking. The angle of the ball's return depends on where it strikes the paddle.

This is not an emulator of any real hardware. It is a self-contained game that runs inside RetroArch without needing any ROM files. A dummy .game file is used as an entry point in EmulationStation.

Pong was one of the earliest arcade video games and the first commercially successful one. Created by Allan Alcorn at Atari in 1972, the first cabinet was installed at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, and reportedly broke down within days because the coin mechanism was overflowing with quarters.

This system scrapes metadata for the “gong” group(s) and loads the gong set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Quick reference

BIOS

No BIOS files are required. Gong is a standalone libretro game.

ROMs

Place a dummy .game file in /userdata/roms/gong (e.g. gong.game). This file is only needed as a launch entry point for EmulationStation — no actual ROM data is required.

Emulators

RetroArch

RetroArch (formerly SSNES), is a ubiquitous frontend that can run multiple “cores”, which are essentially the emulators themselves. The most common cores use the libretro API, so that's why cores run in RetroArch in Batocera are referred to as “libretro: (core name)”. RetroArch aims to unify the feature set of all libretro cores and offer a universal, familiar interface independent of platform.

RetroArch configuration

RetroArch offers a Quick Menu accessed by pressing [HOTKEY] + South button (B SNES) which can be used to alter various things like RetroArch and core options, and controller mapping. Most RetroArch related settings can be altered from Batocera's EmulationStation.

libretro: gong

The gong core is a standalone Pong game clone written directly as a libretro core. It has no configuration options.

  • License: GPL v3
  • Savestates: supported
  • No core options, no cheats, no disk control

Controls

Gong uses simple two-player paddle controls:

Player Action Control
Player 1 Move paddle up/down D-pad Up/Down or Left Analog Stick
Player 2 Move paddle up/down Controlled by second player or AI

Troubleshooting

Game doesn't appear in EmulationStation

Make sure you have a .game file (e.g. gong.game) in /userdata/roms/gong/. The file can be empty — it just needs to exist for EmulationStation to detect it.

Further troubleshooting

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

  • systems/gong.txt
  • Last modified: 5 weeks ago
  • by wizzard