You're not wrong and a call to an extremely helfpful PR representative for Bally Technologies revealed the whole story.
For any of you too young to remember, Pong is a first-generation video game originally released as a coin-operated arcade game by Atari Inc. on November 29, 1972, and was later also released as a home game. It's based on the sport of table tennis (or "ping pong") and the object is for the player (or players, if you're playing doubles) to use a little cursor (the "paddle") to hit the ball, which gets faster and faster as the game progresses. The game enjoyed massive success when it was first released and is credited with launching the initial video-game boom, hence its subsequently coming to enjoy a kitsch cult status.
The whole Pong/Atari story is a long and convoluted one that we won't digress into here, but we can confirm that the relationship with the company that's now called Bally Technologies (formerly Bally Gaming, among other things) is also a long one that goes way back to Bally's roots as a successful maker of pinball and other arcade games.
These days, Bally Technologies specializes in slot (and to a lesser extent video poker) games, and in 2007 -- with much fanfare -- the company breathed new life into the old arcade game by releasing a new Pong-themed slot machine that, in addition to the usual slot reels, featured Pong bonus rounds that enabled you to earn extra points. What made the new game particularly newsworthy was that it actually incorporated an element of skill, which although a feature of some of the earliest slot machines, had been outlawed for several decades.
The reason that Pong (and Breakout, which Bally Technologies will also be releasing as a slot machine in its "skill series") was allowed to feature an element of skill is because it conforms to the rule insisting that machines must have an element of randomness in their base game, with the skill part coming into play only in the bonus round -- something not covered by regulations. Plus, a certain level of bonus is guaranteed to all players, regardless of their abilities; skilled players simply have an opportunity to enhance their bonus score for even bigger rewards.
As is the norm with new slots, once the games had won all the necessary regulatory approvals, they were introduced onto various casino floors for a period of live testing by the slot-playing general public. This field testing is common practice for any new slot machine and the results can be anything from the game being such a runaway overnight success that you find yourself falling over it wherever you go to it being a complete flop that quietly disappears into oblivion. In the case of Pong, it turns out that the public reaction fell somewhere in between.
While the game was popular, the feedback that Bally Technologies received convinced them that it needed some tweaking. Hence, in its initial incarnation as a slot machine, Pong was withdrawn from the casino floor in order to revamp the mechanics and be generally customized in the light of player feedback.
For all you Pong fans out there, the good news is that the upgrading process has now been completed and the game is due for official release sometime this month, probably alongside Breakout. This doesn't mean you'll see them in casinos that soon, however, since there's a lag of up to six months from the time the slot manufacturers offer the game for sale to that happening, not least because the machines are made to order only after a firm order has been placed. All going well, however, you should see Pong popping up in a casino near you sometime this summer, if not sooner.
In the meantime, here's a link to a YouTube video of how the old Pong slot looked and worked.
