Gong Core Options/Additions suggestions

This port of Pong has been a long lingering addition on all Libretro platforms to mostly act as a showcase of it’s abilities, but it’s surprisingly lacking for something with so much potential.

All you get in the core options is the option for the other player to either be a CPU, or Player 2. Or to change the Refresh Rate of your monitor.

I think this game/core would greatly benefit from the following additions/suggestions:

-Mod Switcher In order to highlight the given option on most old Pong consoles, you’d have the option to switch between Handball, Waterball, Hockey, Tennis and Skeet as the other 5 modes. To give acknowledgement to the “Colour TV Game 6” Nintendo Pong Console. And that was from 1977.

-Colour/Theme Picker A little personalisation to give the user that option to make the game look like what they want it to look like. Doesn’t have to be more flexible than the regular Themes of RetroArch, but could be a nice option if some don’t prefer the blue/orange/yellow scheme used currently.

-CPU Difficulty I think the default one is a bit too easy. Could range from easy to expert. Depending entirely on preference.

-Ball speed tweak Instead of gradually getting faster with each hit, it could be a fixed speed depending on your preferred playstyle.

-Scoring mode Instead of the “each bounce adds one more accumulative point” system, it should have an option to switch back to the regular traditional one-point system.

-Maximum score Speaks for itself. Setting it to 0 could mean endless/infinite.

-Paddle length Entirely separate from the game modes, the user could have the option to tweak how long the paddles are. Up to preference of course, ranging from square to wall.


But those are all just my suggestions. If any of you find these ideas interesting, I’d love to engage in a discussion.

1 Like