Skyrim modder brings retro game Pong to Special Edition loading screens

Modders have put an awful lot of effort into making sure Skyrim has continually evolved and expanded in the years since it was first released into the world.

Many have focused on massively overhauling the game by adding the likes of new quests, huge building projects, and interesting player homes to it, with a few even going as far as making changes like turning the province into a maze of mysterious doors.

However, sometimes the mods that stick around longest in load orders are the ones that simply make minor tweaks that can either increase your immersion or improve how you interact with the game, with a new mod achieving the latter by bringing a classic game to loading screens.

Fancy becoming the Pong champion of Tamriel?

The mod in question is simply called ‘PONG’, and is the work of modder Daermonster. Some of their previous work has added the likes of a Clint Eastwood-inspired cowboy follower and a Mortal Kombat-style battle arena to Skyrim.

This time, they’ve taken it upon themselves to update a popular OG Skyrim mod, Twitch Eaglehart’s ‘Pong in loading screens’, which, as you might imagine, allows you to kill the time spent waiting for the game to prepare the next location with a few games of pong.

Daermonster looks to have tried to keep this function as intact as possible with their new version, having simply optimised Twitch Eaglehart’s work so that it can work with Skyrim’s Special Edition and saved you some possible load order headaches by ensuring it doesn’t depend on the use of ESP files.

The Pong setup you’ll be greeted with, which you can catch a glimpse of in the clip below, also comes with the same customisation options as the original, allowing you to add a scoreboard to the setup or switch up the colours of the paddles and ball.

If you’ve got an incredibly swanky PC that’s capable of reducing Skyrim’s load time to minuscule interludes that might not give you time to fit in enough Pong, Daermonster recommends that you make a slight tweak to Skyrim’s INI file, which they credit fellow modder Akcelsior for pointing out to them.

Regardless of whether you’re now trying to win ten straight Pong matches per dungeon run, make sure to follow us for more updates on The Elder Scrolls 6 and the interesting world of Skyrim modding. You can also check out our mods of the month for December 2022.