This week was Atari's 40th anniversary and the finalists in the Pong Developer Challenge to celebrate this milestone have been announced. You can now cast your votes for seven games inspired by Pong.

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and inventor of Pong is one of the judges for the Atari Indie Challenge. But now that the seven finalists have been chosen voting is open to all.

Go to the website to see the Studio Descriptions and videos for each entry:

For reaching the finals each of these entries wins at least $5,000 but your vote influences which which will win the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize, worth $50,000, $37,500 and $15,000 respectively.

I Programmer didn't submit an entry, but we do have a playable version of the classic game available for you to  appreciate just how far we've come in 40 years. Also as we've documented how our version is written in JavaScript it also serves as an introduction to writing games using nothing but classic HTML - no canvas is used in this game.

Many of today developers, not just of games but of enterprise applications and the infrastructure on which other development now happens, were first introduced to computers with the Atari and the games that it was possible to play and to program on it so thanks to Nolan Bushnell for 40 years worth of fun and progress.

More Information

Atari Pong Indie Developer Challenge Finalists

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