Have You Played... 3D Pong?
It's like Pong but in 3D
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Pong but with the camera positioned behind your paddle and the ball no longer limited to a 2D plane. Up, right, left, down; the possibilities were practically endless in 3D Pong.
There's something so simple and uninspiring about this Flash browser game that I feel almost bad writing about it, but it was ubiquitous on computer screens at my school. Those machines didn't have any games on them and so we were limited to what we could find online and run easily, which meant it was pretty much either this or RuneScape. Even now I'd still choose 3D Pong.
I still can, too. It's playable here, and though I don't remember it being called Curveball, I do remember the fun of trying to curve the ball away from the AI opponent. It gets better as it gets faster, too, the ball pinging back and forth till your reactions are instinctual. Playing it now, it's still fun - and I'm silly to feel awkward writing about it. 3D Pong is great.