Rebound (video game)
Development of "Rebound" began in late 1973, as one of several variations they produced in 1974 on the gameplay of the successful "Pong" (1972), Atari's first game and the fourth-ever arcade game. Around the same time, Atari launched Kee Games, a subsidiary meant to produce clone games of Atari's products and act as a competitor in order to expand into more distribution channels in the same region than the industry typically supported. Kee's first game, released in March 1974, was "Spike", a clone of "Rebound", which added a "spike" button to the game that made the paddle jump up and attempt to bounce the ball downwards instead of up. In addition to the base game, Atari sold a conversion kit to convert any Atari two-player "Pong" variant into "Rebound", and in 1977 "Rebound" was included in "Video Olympics" for the Atari 2600, a collection of "Pong" variants.
Atari joystick port
The Atari 2600 developed out of an effort to address problems Atari found when releasing their first home video game console, "Pong". Although successful, "Pong" was an expensive system to design, and was dedicated solely to one game. It would be much more practical to have a machine that could run multiple games. The list of games it would need to support included "Pong" variations, and "Tank". It was the desire to run these two games that led to the need for some sort of flexible input system; "Pong" used analog paddle controllers, while "Tank" used dual digital (on/off) joysticks. Arcade games of the era generally used paddles, joysticks or a unique sort of steering wheel controller that was spun, entirely unlike a real car.