I just happened to get my Pong Clock in the mail on my birthday. It's pretty cool, though I'm a little bummed it doesn't have an option to run off of batteries. There's no way I'm going to be able to mount this on the center of some wall.

Other than that one let down, the thing is pretty darn cool, especially since it is just one of 400 in existence. Heck, even my wife likes it, and she hates everything game-related.

Hit the jump for a super short video showing the minute time change. The right side scores to change the minutes and the left side scores to change the hours. Or as I like to put it, I'm the minute hand and Ashcraft is the hour hand. You see, because I would totally pwn him at Pong. Totaly. Brian Crecente

Just this weekend my wife and I were talking about the super cool Pong Clock she ordered for me back in January. If you're not familiar, the Pong Clock is a bit of gaming, a bit of art and a bit of time-telling all rolled into one. The thing hangs on your wall and tells time via the score of an automated and on-going game of Pong.

I was so jazzed about it that my wife, upon hearing me gush and gush and gush about the clock, decided to order one for me as a surprise. Then in February word came from Buro Vormkrijgers, the clock makers, that Atari had lawyered up and threatened to sue them. The two managed to work out a deal that allowed BV to produce exactly 400 of the clocks under a limited license agreement.

The reworking of the clock and inclusion of some Atari TM crap required BV to restart the clock, as it were, on the production process.

Well the wait is finally over, BV just emailed today to say that the special screens to make the clocks have finally come in all 400 clocks have been assembled. We sent payment today and should receive the things in three to five weeks. Apparently, BV doesn't have the capacity to go to the post office for the orders and prefers to ship them en mass. While I think that's a pathetic excuse, our dealings with them in every other way have been beyond satisfactory.

I'll make sure to post a review, pics and a video of the clock when it arrives in July. Can't wait. Brian Crecente

Atari got wind of the clock and, you guessed it, lawyered up and contacted Buro Vormkrijgers.

Basically ATARI demanded we shut down our website immediately, and halt all production. The reason for that; they stated they own the Pong name and game characteristics, on which we were infringing in their eyes. Needless to say we were unaware of such possible infringements when we started this endeavour.

On advice of our lawyer, we seconded those claims, and kept our website live. However, in the meantime we halted all production and other investments, and cancelled our display-order from china, to prevent getting stuck with huge financial damage [these things are very expensive] and stocks that need to be destroyed, if these claims got confirmed. For us the Pong Clock started out as a fun project within our office,that got so much attention, that we then decided to produce and sell it to share the fun with you, not to get bankrupted by.

After a lot of back and fourth, BV and Atari were able to reach an agreement. Atari said they liked the clock and realized that it was really more a homage than a deliberate attempt at infringement. So Atari licensed BV to produce a limited run of 400 Pong Clocks.

This new agreement requires that the clock have some sort of credit to Atari, so BV had to cancel their order for the special LCD screens. Unfortunately, these screens are only made in bulk (think thousands) so BV now has to wait for a larger company to place a big order for them and piggy back on that order. What that means is that I'm still getting my clock, and it will be worth lots more since they are never making any more, but it's going to be months.

BV says in the email they expect some cancellations, so they are still taking pre-orders. Order now, or forever be without Pong Clock.