Sorry for not noticing your previous reply. If I had been a bit more observant I could have avoided that. Adding the + to both paddles placed them in the center of the screen as well as allowing them to move smoothly back and forth. Now the issue I am having is that the ball hits the paddle, but does not bounce back towards the other side. Alls it does is sit in the position where it hit the paddle. I am assuming this is some issue in the two elsif statements that check for collision with the paddles. Or possibly something wrong inside the subroutine definition? I fixed the 'return if' statement so that's not it. UPDATE...It was in the $player1 elsif statement. the two lines needed to be switched to match $player2 elsif statement.