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.
History of video games
In the early days of the programmable market, all of the games for a given system were developed by the firm that released the console. That changed in 1979 when four Atari programmers, seeking greater recognition and financial reward for their contributions, struck out on their own to form Activision, the first third-party developer. The company went on to develop a string of hits including "Kaboom!" (1981), "River Raid" (1982), and "Pitfall!" (1982), recognized as one of the foundational games of the scrolling platformer genre. In 1981, another group of Atari employees joined with ex-Mattel staff to form Imagic and experienced success with games like "Demon Attack" (1982) and "Atlantis" (1982).