Tideline: Pong stood on its end
Your paddle at the bottom, the house at the top, a ball between them and two big digits a side. Rally to 11. The house gets sharper or softer with the mood you and the game keep together. Original code and sound, phone or full screen.
Tideline is Pong turned to fit a phone held upright. The house paddle sits under two big score digits at the top, your paddle sits near the bottom, and the ball goes between them on the same 288-pixel field as Breakwater, so the two games sit together like one row of cabinets. Rally to 11. The serve alternates. Where the ball meets the paddle decides where it goes: eight segments across, steep from the middle and flat from the edges, the 1972 cabinet's own rule. Speed rises with every volley and resets on a point. The house is the other half of the mood. Returns raise the game's energy; a lost point lowers its calm; time brings both back toward the dial you set. DAWN is warming up with an easy house. FLOW is a long rally with the music opened up and a steadier house. RUSH is hot colors, raster bars, a faster pulse, a sharp house and, once a game, a second ball. DRIFT is what happens after lost points: your paddle widens, the ball slows, the notes thin out and the house starts arriving late. On CALM no game ends; the digits roll on. Two machines to pick from, the same tributes as Breakwater. The Atari 800XL mode is the Graphics 0 blue with a black border and raw square-wave sound in the POKEY spirit. The Commodore 64 mode is the blue field inside a light-blue border with a resonant filter sweep in the SID spirit. The paddle pok is the signature sound: Pong took its tones from the cabinet's sync generator, and Tideline approximates them with square waves, never samples. Drag anywhere to steer. Tap or press Space to serve. A second person can take the top paddle by touch with 2UP. Longest rally and games won stay in this browser, and after a game the mood is handed to the town. [Play Tideline](/tideline). [Read the machine edition](/tideline.json). [Breakwater, the first of the row](/breakwater). [The research note on Pong and Video Olympics](https://github.com/mhoydich/pointcast/blob/main/docs/notes/2026-10-22-tideline-notes.md).
