Atari has recently announced that they plan on creating another sequel to their 70's arcade hit Pong, with new features, story, and gameplay mechanics. That's right, I said another. There are multiple remakes and remastered editions reaching Pong IV, along with Super Pong, Pong Doubles (two player co-op), Quadrapong (four players!), and Doctor Pong. They've also branched out and made single players pong where its you versus a bunch of bricks in Breakout, the Pong for the antisocial. But this new Pong, The Legend of Pong: Rise of the Anti-Paddle, will be the Pong to end all Pongs.

This Pong will have a fully immersive story spanning three disks. The graphics are breathtaking, with enough foliage dew and luminance to make you think the player just got a fresh waxing. The music will be spectacular, combining the musical talent of John Williams of Star Wars fame, Nobuo Uematsu of Square Enix AC/DC, Daft Punk, and the re-animated corpse of Mozart with the standard "beep" and "boop" of the original Pong.

The characters have a relatable quality that makes it feel as if you are facing the grave dangers of the hero's quest yourself. The motion capture was done so well you'd think that you were watching live-action human movement (due to budget constraints, 93% of the FMVs are actual human beings in front of a green screen; you could hardly tell the difference). One could only imagine the size of the balls those actors were sporting. The developing team was also not shy in implementing anime cut scenes and cell-shaded graphics where necessary! Don't be surprised when a fleshy human (William Shatner) is carrying a compelling discussion with a spunky, bug-eyed anime chick.

The game follows the adventure of a dashing, young 18 year-old (the only ones qualified to save the world, apparently), voice-acted and motion captured by Captain Kirk himself, as he quests to save some princess who appears to have been chosen by lottery in mortal danger. You quest around the kingdom of EightBit, recruiting allies of various species and hues all the while defeating hordes of goblins, crumbling dictators, and frequent minigames involving interbreeding giant chickens with their parents and masturbation contests. The story revolves around and evil spirit called the Anti-Paddle that possesses your brother and slaughters your family in one of the most gruesome random acts of violence ever to be depicted in claymation. You and your brother meet face to face after 3 disks and 50 hours of straight FMVs and have one last sword fighting action sequence with Quicktime events involving colorful button-mashing just for the hell of it. Your swords break and your shields fly off in opposite directions.

Now here comes the part where you actually get to control the character! Its you and your brother as he holds up his shield of Anti-Paddle magic and you with your shield of Holy Pong. In the charbroiled walls of the castle with no escape you notice the base of the back wall has become terribly weak. Yet you also take note that the wall behind you is ready to crumble at any moment. You use your shield to cast a spell on the nearby cannonball to give it tremendous momentum and launch it towards your foe. The enemy deflects it with their shield! The battle begins!

The gameplay has received exciting new tweaks this time around. Now developers added forward movement, a hate meter, AI, and mana gathering! Granted, the mana cannot be used since you don't know a single magic spell, though you can read about the awesome ones in the game manual! There are invisibility spells, fireball casting spells, and demon summoning spells! When the head of development was asked how these additions would change the strategy used in previous Pong games, his reply was "There was a strategy?".

To be a fair reviewer, I must point out the flaws of The Legend of Pong: Rise of the Anti-Paddle. If one could look past the shoddy controls, obvious plagiarism of nearly every game on the market, and Nazi propaganda, then this version of Pong could easily replace all other games in your collection (which it will, since it immediately writes its own data into all nearby data storage devices it comes within three meters of, including your brain).

The release date for The Legend of Pong: Rise of the Anti-Paddle has not been officially stated, but fan speculation seems to be that it will be released a few months before the mystical game Duke Nukem Forever hits shelves on Jupiter. Because of the awesomeness that is this game, no modern console or PC could ever hope to run it. It will be released for the Xbox Hypersphere (infinite degrees of fun!), Nintendo Mario (it might as well), Game Boy Supreme Lord of All Mankind (already is in my book), Playstation 5000, and the IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer Home Edition.