Originally released in 1972, Pong from Atari is one of the first video games ever made. The simple table tennis sports game is a permanent fixture in our popular culture, and iterations of it are still released today. One of the latest versions of Pong is one of the most creative versions of the game yet, combining its simplistic table tennis gameplay with the ongoing battle royale craze that has taken the video game industry by storm.
Balls Royale (originally titled Pong Circle) is a new 50-player battle royale game that's currently available on Steam. In Balls Royale, 50 players have to deflect incoming balls until there's only two left, culminating in a match between the last two survivors. The game is becoming increasingly popular on Steam, and console versions are also a possibility down the road.
Balls Royale may sound like a bizarre game, but it's not the first time that an old-school game has been recreated as a battle royale. Perhaps the most notable example of this is Tetris 99, which is a Tetris battle royale game that has earned a great deal of popularity on the Nintendo Switch.
Meanwhile, fans have created their own versions of retro games as battle royales. The Super Mario battle royale game was big last summer, though Nintendo's DMCA takedowns forced the creators to retool the game to no longer have Super Mario characters.
Balls Royale is out now on Steam.