Sometimes, the total is greater than the sum of the parts. Tetris
and Pong are classics, addictive and unshakable from their places
in gaming history. TONG is the result of mixing the two,
capitalizing on the essential qualities of each classic and adding
new twists of its own to make an explosive chemical reaction out of
it all.
Why? Why play Tetris and Pong in the same place at the same time? It is weird, that's for sure. Tetris and Pong work different parts of your brain, parts that like to have your full attention to themselves. So right at first, TONG can seem a bit overwhelming. As it turns out, though, for all the zillions of variations and clones we've had of Pong and Tetris over the years, putting the two together actually makes the "twists" and "extras" make sense. In Arkanoid, Break-out, Brick-out, etc, what are these blocks doing in the middle of a Pong game? In various Tetris clones, where do the new, non-four-block shapes come from and what's with the explosives and other bonuses? Well, when Pong and Tetris are going on simultaneously and in the same space, all that stuff and many more clever ideas suddenly aren't little novelties, they're sensible parts of a frantic game.
Shameless plug: I've thought of another way to ruin Tetris; check it out here: http://kbtris.penduin.net
Thanks to webassembly and emscripten, you can play TONG right here in the comfort of your web browser!
This is exactly the kind of unnatural technology combination that the game itself celebrates.The latest "official" release version 1.3 can be downloaded as:
TONG has been mentioned in several publications, including some magazines I follow(ed) at least well enough to find out about it...
TONG is also featured on a handful of game/software directories, which is fun for publicity, but they tend to be Windows-centric and use words like "Freeware" to describe it...
The following are reactions to pre-release version 0.8, taken off a now-defunct message board. (original link)
TONG is free software (under the GNU General Public License), is being developed on GNU/Linux and should run on any platform that SDL works on. It requires SDL, SDL_image, and SDL_mixer.
TONG has successfully been built for GNU/Linux, Win32, GP2X/Wiz, Nintendo
Wii, and Dreamcast. Releases are made at arbitrary milestones,
basically whenever I see fit to do it. :^) If anyone would like
to volunteer for porting (should be trivial) and/or packaging binaries
for Macintosh/OSX or any other platform, please do so,
and let me know! I'll be glad to help out, credit you and/or distribute
your ports/spin-offs here as well.
If you want to play bleeding-edge TONG,
grab it from
CVS.
You can also grab a Nightly
CVS tarball.
Comments? Questions? Feel like buying me a Pandora? ;^) Email me!
