What this site is

Ping Pong Arcade is a free, browser-based games site. There are thirty original table-tennis-inspired arcade games here, a library of written guides that explain how they work and how to get better at them, and nothing else. No downloads, no accounts, no installers and no purchases of any kind.

Everything runs in your browser using HTML5 canvas and plain JavaScript. The games share one engine, which is why a skill you learn in one of them transfers to the next: the same physics, the same paddle contact rule and the same scoring vocabulary run underneath all thirty.

Why it exists

Browser table tennis games tend to fall into two groups. There are the very old ones, which are two rectangles and a square, and there are the heavyweight ones that want a download and a launcher. Very little sits in between: genuinely playable arcade table tennis that loads in a second, works on a phone, and has enough depth to be worth returning to.

That gap is what this site is for. The games are deliberately short — most runs last between one and five minutes — and deliberately deep enough that the difference between a first attempt and a tenth is visible.

How the games are made

Every game on this site is original work. The code, the artwork, the sound, the opponents and the written content were all made for Ping Pong Arcade. Nothing is licensed from a third party, nothing is scraped, and no existing game's assets or interface is reproduced.

The artwork is drawn with canvas primitives at runtime rather than loaded from image files, which is why the games start instantly and why every arena scales cleanly from a 320-pixel phone to a 1920-pixel monitor. The sound is synthesised in the browser with the Web Audio API, so no audio files are downloaded and no third-party audio is used anywhere.

The opponents are invented characters with written playing styles that the AI actually implements. None of them is based on a real person, and no real player, club, federation or competition appears anywhere on this site.

What the games are not

These are arcade games, not simulations. The physics model keeps the parts of table tennis that are readable and fun on a screen — an arcing ball, a bounce, a net that punishes flat shots, curve from spin — and drops everything that would make a browser game feel unresponsive.

Nothing here is coaching material for the actual sport, and nothing here should be read as a description of how a real table tennis ball behaves. Where a guide explains a mechanic, it is explaining our mechanic. Where it refers to the real sport, it says so and points at the governing body rather than inventing a fact.

Accessibility

Every game can be paused. Every game works with a keyboard, with a mouse and with touch. Every game has a visual cue for anything that is signalled by sound, and the reduced-motion preference is respected — particle effects thin out substantially for anyone whose system has asked for less animation.

One game, One-Tap Ping Pong, is built specifically around a single input: it needs exactly one button, never requires two things at once, and plays identically with a key, a tap, a click or a switch. It is the recommended entry point for anyone who finds simultaneous controls difficult.

The site itself uses semantic HTML, keyboard-reachable controls with visible focus, descriptive alternative text and readable contrast in both the light and dark themes. If something here does not work for you, please say so — accessibility reports are the fastest kind of feedback to act on.

Your data

Your scores, favourites and play history are stored in your own browser using localStorage. They are never uploaded, never linked to an account and never shared between devices, because this is a static site with no server behind it.

That has one consequence worth stating plainly: there are no global leaderboards anywhere on this site, and there never will be without a backend to run them. The only score you are beating is your own.

What we will not do

That list is not aspirational. It is the standard the site is held to, and the editorial policy explains how it is checked.

  • Invent player counts, download figures, ratings or reviews
  • Present fictional opponents or tournaments as real people or real events
  • Copy another game's artwork, sound, interface or code
  • Publish content that was scraped, spun or auto-rewritten from somewhere else
  • Claim online multiplayer, cloud saves or any other feature the site does not have
  • Place advertising over gameplay, over controls, or anywhere it could be mistaken for the interface