Hey Arcaders!
Welcome to Atari Months! Sorry for the delay- (jet lag from Europe) But I’m ready to get this amazing history lesson going. lets get started!
At its core… from the beginning… Nolan Bushnell was Atari.
from an interview in the august 1982 issue of Video Games, Nolan himself put it quite succinctly-
There were a couple of factors involved. My interest really began in the early 1960s when I was studying electrical engineering at the University of Utah. They have a good computer science department there headed by Dr. David Evans, one of the pioneers in the field of computer graphics. Anyway, I used to go over to the department at night and play an old game called Space Wars, which had been written on the first computers at M.I.T. It was a good game, although a little advanced for its time.
Every summer while I was in college I worked as manager of the games department of an amusement park in Salt Lake. I was struck by how old-fashioned most of those attractions were. I mean, knocking milk bottles over with a baseball is not the most contemporary game in the world. I got to thinking one day that there would be a tremendous market for a computer game like Space Wars. But it just didn’t make economic sense at the time. It would have taken a heck of a lot of quarters to pay for an $8 million computer. So I just filed the idea in the back of my mind.
Around 1969 or 1970. I was working for Ampex in Redwood City as a research engineer by then. Microcomputers had just begun to hit the market and I could see my idea becoming more viable. Originally, I envisioned linking a number of video screens to one central computer. But as I kept adding more and more elements, one day it just hit me: I can do this whole thing in hardware. Once I figured that out, though, the economics seemed overwhelming.
We created our first game- Computer Space. Actually, it was a refinement of Space Wars. It was a good game, but a little ahead of its time. We only sold about 2,000 units, but that was enough to get us off the ground. We also operated a 100-unit route at night. With our technical skills, we were able to put back together old junker games that we had picked up dirt cheap. It provided cash flow.
I had started a company called Syzygy and through that sold Computer Space to a local firm, Nutting Associates. Then, I went to work at Nutting to put the unit into production and to refine it. Syzygy was just a partnership, but when we tried to incorporate we found that the name was already taken. That’s when we changed the name of the corporation to Atari.
Atari is a polite warning to your opponent that he’s about to be engulfed in the Japanese game of Go, It’s something like check in chess. I just thought that that was a neat name for a corporation.
Anyway, Nutting never really understood the relationship that was required for me to stay with them. After Computer Space was in production they said “OK, Nolan, you’re head of engineering—how about designing another game for us?” And I said, “OK, let’s figure out how much of Nutting Associates I get.” I saw it as a situation where I was helping them get into a new business, but they said they were Nutting Associates, big and strong, really smart guys. It was obvious to me very early on that they were not smart guys in terms of business strategy. Anyway, I said, “What I want is an option on a third of the company and more say in the marketing strategy.” They basically said, “No, Nolan, you’re a good engineer. We’ll give you five percent of the company on an option if you stay in engineering. We’ll take care of the marketing.” And I said, “Nyet!” Two days later, I resigned and set up Atari.
There are many twists and turns in this story- will hit the big ones, the games, the home consoles and More!
you ready… I am.
well start with the first game in our next post.
Keep Playin’ Like It’s 1981!
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