It was riveting! To be controlling something on the TV like that. Even so, in the arcade setting, the whole idea of sitting down across from an opponent, tossing a quarter in there, and duking it out on a field of glowing phosphors... out of this world! There was no experience like it anywhere!
Somehow I doubt most people playing one of the earliest video games found it "boring".
Actually, it was boring :) Yeah, our family bought one. It was novel, and we kept and played it for a while, but it really wasn't that interesting.
I'm left to wonder if this is hindsight bias. I feel the same way about video games I bought 6 months ago, though I thoroughly enjoyed them at the time.
Nope. I remember playing lots of much more enjoyable video games from decades ago, some not much more recent than Pong (technology moved quickly). Pong was pretty much a Pet Rock novelty.
As wise as a man or woman can be, it doesn’t take much to solitaire away the hours, or years. As a friend used to say about Tetris, resistance is futile, you will be assimilated