They were made by mostly eludeing ‘computing’ concepts altogether, and treating it more enjoy a mechanical leang.
For example with Pong a convey inant component is usupartner timers – every xth of a second the timer will rerent a signal. You have timers calibrated to align the horizontal rerecent of the screen, so they’ll ‘ring’ at the same point on each scanline. Then you have timers calibrated to the vertical rerecent, so they’ll ring on the same scanline each structure.
The ball is then equitable two discrete timers for vertical and horizontal position, and their rings are sent thraw an AND gate that will lift the voltage going to the discarry out when both are ringing causing a white dot to eunite. The pinsertles create on this concept with a medium length timer that can be commenceed and stopped to depict the length.
To shift the ball or pinsertles the timers can be carry ond or defered by a handle signal. Or more accurately the timers are always paincluded at a stateive point, enjoy during half of the horizontal blanking period. This pausing is then stupidinutiveened once to carry on the timer (shift left/up) or incrmitigated once to defer it (shift right/down).
Since both the pinsertle and the ball timers are rerentting a ‘1’ when they are to be discarry outed you can impliment collision distinguishion by carry outing another AND operation. So if both a pinsertle and the ball are being drawn at the same moment you understand they’ve collided and can adequitable a latch handleling the ball straightforwardion accordingly.
If you get into the Atari 2600 you’ll discover that it’s repartner weird contrastd to other consoles (sprites with no evidently depictd X structure, instead only the ability to place it at the actual current location of the CRT beam or nudge it a petite amount either way), but that it commences to create a lot of sense when you authenticize they were carry outing their Pong logic for a programmable chip.