Smash Ping Pong

Konami

Nintendo

Sports

2500.00

Smash Ping Pong is a port of Konami's arcade game Konami's Ping Pong, and is an unusual collaboration between the company and Nintendo. The game itself replicates the sport pretty well, and either one or two people can play it. The rules of the game are simple – one side serves and the two players will hit the ball with a paddle back and forth, defending their side. If the ball crosses the edge of the table after one bounce on the defending side, a point is scored. A point will also be awarded to your opponent if you hit the net or miss your serve, or don’t bounce the ball on your side once when serving. There are three rounds in total and whoever wins two first wins the game. Pressing Left or Right on the controller will swing the paddle with either a forehand of backhand stroke, which angles your hit in different ways. You can smash the ball by pressing Up, except when serving. This sends the ball at a fast speed across the table, but is trickier to properly time. The FDS version adds an additional game mode that changes the amount of points necessary to win, with Game A needing 11 points and Game B requiring 21. However, whoever wins must do so by two points, unlike the arcade game, which always ended when someone got to 15 first. A few things were also changed to tie it closer to Nintendo – Konami's penguin mascot Penta is replaced with Donkey Kong, and the spectators are all a generic male instead of the varied male and female faces that are in the arcade. The title screen also replaces Penta with Disk-kun, but the animation plays out the same. In terms of presentation, the sound isn’t quite as good as the arcade version, and is noticeably missing the clacking sound of the paddle. Conversely, it adds a voice for the referee. The arcade version was also ported to several computers, including the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX, and ZX Spectrum.