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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot

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Speaker 1: com Aimar and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: Then today joining me in the studio is Mr Chuck

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Speaker 1: Bryant from Stuff you Should Know. Hi, Chuck insert computer

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Speaker 1: simulated applause. I'm sure no one can do that if

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Speaker 1: we wanted to. Yeah. So I was looking through all

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Speaker 1: the different requests that I've ever seen, and I realized

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Speaker 1: there are tons. I mean, they've just been piling up, uh,

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Speaker 1: And I was going over those with you, and you

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Speaker 1: saw one that leapt out at you and you immediately

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Speaker 1: wanted to do it. It comes to us from Jeff

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Speaker 1: who wrote, Hi, Jonathan, since you asked, I do have

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Speaker 1: a suggestion for a topic to cover that I don't

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Speaker 1: think you have yet. Could you do an episode or

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Speaker 1: two if needed to cover the rise and fall of Atari.

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Speaker 1: Actually worked in the store that sold only Atari home

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Speaker 1: computers and game systems and the early nineties. Atari's products

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Speaker 1: are at the time we're as good or better than

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Speaker 1: what was being put out by their competitors, and yet

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Speaker 1: they failed big time. Thank you for the entertaining and

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Speaker 1: educational show. I enjoyed Part one of the two thousand

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Speaker 1: fourteen review this morning. So clearly this request came in

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Speaker 1: some time ago, I guess so. But yeah, this was

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Speaker 1: one that when I brought it up to you, you said,

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Speaker 1: absolutely we should do an episode about Attari. Well, you

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Speaker 1: and I are the same age roughly, and we are

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Speaker 1: children of Atari every way, you know, we grew up

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Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties during the Atari's heyday. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it was huge, huge in my life. And uh

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Speaker 1: my brother actually uh has set his up recently and

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Speaker 1: I was just playing uh Combat last week. That Combat

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Speaker 1: and we'll get to this obviously was the game that

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Speaker 1: shipped with and it kind of holds up. You know

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Speaker 1: what it really does. I it's it's an incredibly simple

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Speaker 1: game and has incredibly simple graphics, but it's the play

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Speaker 1: ability comes in the fact that it's a two player

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Speaker 1: game and uh, trash talking galore can happen. We had

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Speaker 1: a blast. It really was a lot of fun, and

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Speaker 1: not just for nostalgia. The gameplay, like you said, still

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Speaker 1: holds up to a certain degree. I think, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's obviously for someone who's like, no, I

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Speaker 1: need to have you know, the fourteen different controls mapped

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Speaker 1: out on my keyboard and my my gaming mouse and everything.

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Speaker 1: It's not gonna appeal to you, but but it's still

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Speaker 1: a compelling experience. So we wanted to go through the

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Speaker 1: rise and fall of Atari. And it is an epic story.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it has so many different elements to it,

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Speaker 1: and it's at least gonna be two episodes. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: see how how far we can go before we have

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Speaker 1: to take a break and replenish our our, our vital

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Speaker 1: bodily fluids before we break out. Exactly. Good good reference there,

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Speaker 1: Mr Chuck. So starting off a little little information before

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Speaker 1: we get into the actual Attari days. Computer games have

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Speaker 1: been around pretty much since the days that computers were

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Speaker 1: first built. You know, you you have computer programmers who

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Speaker 1: often had these analytical minds that were also fond of

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Speaker 1: things like puzzles and games, and so naturally, when those

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Speaker 1: early computer programs were being designed, programmers were thinking, huh,

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Speaker 1: I wonder if I could actually make this machine do

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Speaker 1: something fun, not just something functional. Yeah, I think that's

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Speaker 1: one of the things you probably heard a lot in

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Speaker 1: the early days. Would well, maybe they'd be fun if

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Speaker 1: dot dot dot and uh, before you know what, they

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Speaker 1: were playing some you know to us an archaic form

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Speaker 1: of a video Yeah, maybe like a game version of

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Speaker 1: like Tic Tac toe, you know, but instead of it

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Speaker 1: having a video screen because video screens were late in

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Speaker 1: the game in the computer days, they would print this

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Speaker 1: stuff out like you would have maybe a tape printer,

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Speaker 1: and it would print each move, so every time something changed,

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Speaker 1: it had to print a new piece of paper for

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Speaker 1: you to look at, or a new strip of tape. Really,

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Speaker 1: because a friend of mine, his name's Richard Garriot, and

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Speaker 1: he's a big game developer. He created one of the

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Speaker 1: big computer game successes and then in the eighties and

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Speaker 1: nineties called Ultima, and he talks about in his days

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Speaker 1: when he was in computer programming classes in high school,

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Speaker 1: it was all printed to tape and it was like

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Speaker 1: a little adventure game and we'll talk about adventure in

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Speaker 1: a bit too, where it would print out the room

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Speaker 1: and your little position, like you'd be a little X

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Speaker 1: in the room and you'd say go left. It would

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Speaker 1: have to print a new version of it where the

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Speaker 1: X was just slightly to the left. In the pre

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Speaker 1: eco friendly days as well, these days, such a game

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Speaker 1: would probably be frowned upon. So uh, but you know

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Speaker 1: it sets the stage to show that that people realize

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Speaker 1: there was potential or electronics in the game world. And

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Speaker 1: that gets us up to nine eight, when a man

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Speaker 1: named William Higginbotham of Brooke Caven National Laboratory veloped an

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Speaker 1: electronic game called Tennis for two on a Donner Model

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Speaker 1: thirty analog computer, and uh, it would simulate table tennis,

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Speaker 1: and it simulated velocity and changes in direction, all this

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Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um, yeah, I looked it up just

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Speaker 1: to see what it looked like. It looked like sort

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Speaker 1: of like a like a ship's sonar or something. Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: It was taking an oscil lator, the same sort of

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Speaker 1: thing that you might see as like a heart monitor

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Speaker 1: in hospital, kind of kind of like that, and by

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Speaker 1: you change by fiddling with the voltage, essentially he could

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Speaker 1: change the different images so that you would have essentially

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Speaker 1: to paddle like things and the ball like thing and

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Speaker 1: play a very basic game. And he said that he

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Speaker 1: had made it because people would come to visit the

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Speaker 1: lab and there wasn't a whole lot of stuff that

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Speaker 1: was actually interesting to look at, and so this was

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Speaker 1: the way to entertain them. That's pretty funny to like

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Speaker 1: to impress people he had stuff that was far more advanced.

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Speaker 1: But he's like, oh, but look at this tennis for

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Speaker 1: two and people aroba like, oh, yeah, exactly like cutting edge.

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Speaker 1: So have you ever seen the mel Brooks films Silent Movie?

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Speaker 1: All right? In Silent Movie, there's actually a scene where

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Speaker 1: Sid Caesar Is is in the hospital. His character is

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Speaker 1: in the hospital and to uh, Tom Deloise and Marty

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Speaker 1: Felman who walk up to his heart monitor and turn

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Speaker 1: it into this game and they play a game of

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Speaker 1: Pong on his heart monitor, which totally forgot about causes

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Speaker 1: him to totally freak out. But it's this game which

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Speaker 1: is interesting because the original well we'll get into Pong,

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Speaker 1: but the original Pongs were silent. Yes, yeah, that's actually true.

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Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty two, that's when we get up

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Speaker 1: to the time when m i T. Professor Steve Russell

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Speaker 1: developed a game called Space War, which is one of

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Speaker 1: the earliest video games. He did this with two of

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Speaker 1: his students and they built it for a big mainframe computer. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It was the only way they could really at the time. Exactly.

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Speaker 1: So if you wanted to play a computer game, you

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Speaker 1: had to go someplace where essentially a room is dedicated

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Speaker 1: to that computer, the Big Mac. Yeah, they were largely

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Speaker 1: still using vacuum tubes for a lot of this technology.

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Speaker 1: I mean, transistors had had started to come out, but

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Speaker 1: they hadn't been integrated into computers deeply at this point. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And that's when around this times when an electrical engineering

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Speaker 1: student named Nolan Bushnell, the probably the most important person

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Speaker 1: in this story. Yeah, that's when he discovered space war

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Speaker 1: because the computer lab at the university was going to

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Speaker 1: the University of Utah College of Engineering, had space War

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Speaker 1: on one of its computers. Yeah, he was. I saw

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Speaker 1: an interview with him earlier today on YouTube where he

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Speaker 1: was talking about at the time. He said there were

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Speaker 1: only like four universities in the entire country that had

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Speaker 1: graphical displays period, and University of Utah just happened to

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Speaker 1: be one of them. And it seemed like when you

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Speaker 1: start hearing about the story and how it all just

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Speaker 1: fell into place, it's I don't know if I'm a

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Speaker 1: believer in fate, but all these little puzzle pieces came

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Speaker 1: together in just the right way to get his motor running. Basically,

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Speaker 1: if if they hadn't, if any of the elements that

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Speaker 1: took place, then the whole arcade industry could have been

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Speaker 1: delayed by several years if he had just gone to

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Speaker 1: a different university that didn't have computer screens. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the University of Utah was a pioneer in that space,

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Speaker 1: and so he really got his introduction to it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Another interesting thing about him is that he would work

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Speaker 1: in his off time, like when whenever school was out

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Speaker 1: at the Lagoon Amusement Park. Yeah, that was a huge

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Speaker 1: deal because that inspired the thought of, you know what,

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Speaker 1: people are shoving quarters in these ski ball games and

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Speaker 1: pinball and you know, all manner of sort of boardwalk

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Speaker 1: arcade games. And he obviously had some sort of business

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Speaker 1: sense to him because he thought, why not try and

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Speaker 1: do this really fun thing that I've been sneaking into

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Speaker 1: the lab and doing every night and charge people money

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Speaker 1: for it? Right? What if we were to create an

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Speaker 1: experience using an electronic game where on a per coin basis,

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Speaker 1: you would get either an allotted amount of time to

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Speaker 1: play or some other metric like in pong, it might

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Speaker 1: be the number of lives. In most video games is

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Speaker 1: number of lives, but a few it's time, um, and

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Speaker 1: that that would determine how much of that experience you

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Speaker 1: could have before you had to plunk in another quarter.

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Speaker 1: And if I find it so compelling that I'll sneak

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Speaker 1: into the to the lab, people be willing to pay

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Speaker 1: a quarter for it. Yeah, it was a genius. It

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Speaker 1: was absolutely, I mean you. There are a lot of

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Speaker 1: criticisms that are leveled against Bushnell and Coordinate, including people

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Speaker 1: who used to work with him. Um and a lot

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Speaker 1: of people claim, well, he never invented anything. I have

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Speaker 1: to object to that because he took two separate ideas

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Speaker 1: and turned them into something that spawned an entire industry.

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Speaker 1: And if that's not invention, I don't know what is. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And whether or not he was I guess it wasn't coding,

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Speaker 1: but whether or not he was soldering the games and

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Speaker 1: inventing the games themselves. Those games are worthless unless someone

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Speaker 1: comes along and says, you know what, I know how

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Speaker 1: to package this and take it to the public for

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Speaker 1: them to enjoy, Right, And so, I mean so without

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Speaker 1: this this vision, again, I'm sure we would have eventually

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Speaker 1: come around to the arcade industry. Anyway, someone would have

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Speaker 1: come up with that idea, but it would have been

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Speaker 1: later and the story might have been much different. So

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Speaker 1: Bushnell graduates from college and goes to work for a

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Speaker 1: company called Ampex. This is around nineteen sixty nine. Ampex

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Speaker 1: is an electronics company, and I got a little bit

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Speaker 1: of trivia something I thought you would appreciate, Chuck, you're

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Speaker 1: a musician. So Ampex developed a tape recorder that less

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Speaker 1: Paul used to pioneer the sound on sound technique. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Less Paul used an Ampex tape recorder which was designed

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Speaker 1: to have a secondary writing head that would allow him

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Speaker 1: to record a track and then play along with that

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Speaker 1: recorded track to create an new mixed track of both

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Speaker 1: of them together. So this would allow one musician to

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Speaker 1: essentially back him or herself up. Yeah. Yeah. However, what

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Speaker 1: it did do also is destroy the original track, the

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Speaker 1: original recording, because it records over it, so you no

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Speaker 1: longer have that, so you have you plus yes, and

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Speaker 1: that's the new base. Yeah, which is kind of cool.

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Speaker 1: I thought that you would appreciate that, So I am Tex.

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Speaker 1: Ampex has had a real important part in the electronics

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Speaker 1: industry in general, but it also plays host to the

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Speaker 1: meeting of the two people who would really push Atari

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Speaker 1: in the early days. That's uh, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Dabney they met nine, like you said, both employees

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Speaker 1: of Ampex, and both um very much interested in, uh

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Speaker 1: pioneering Space War as the very first video game. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were looking at Space War and they thought, how

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Speaker 1: can we make this as a coin operated a game. Now,

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Speaker 1: clearly we can't do the same thing that Space War

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Speaker 1: is doing because having a mainframe computer not something you

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Speaker 1: can install in your local bar. So we have to

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Speaker 1: figure out how to take this same concept but do

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Speaker 1: it in a much smaller form factor that could be

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Speaker 1: a coin operated game. And that turned out to be

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Speaker 1: sort of a recurring UM thing in Bushnell's career was

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Speaker 1: this guy did something really neat. Let me sort of

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Speaker 1: make a very similar version, but in a much like

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Speaker 1: sleeker package that's consumer oriented. Yeah. I read a transcript

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Speaker 1: of an interview that UM that Ted Dabney did. Read

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Speaker 1: a lot of that. Actually, Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean

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Speaker 1: there's clearly some bad blood between the two of them.

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Speaker 1: But Dabney talked about how what would happen is Bushnell

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Speaker 1: would come up to him and say I want to

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Speaker 1: do this, How is that possible? Dabney would figure it out,

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Speaker 1: tell him and then Bushnell would go off and do it.

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Speaker 1: So Bushnell had skills, but Dabney always dismissed as saying

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Speaker 1: he wasn't an engineer. He could do something if you

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Speaker 1: told him how to do it, but he couldn't engineer

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Speaker 1: it himself. Yeah, he need he was. He's sort of

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Speaker 1: like a producer almost, Yeah, and really good at getting

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Speaker 1: super talented people together to create a vision. Yeah, sort

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Speaker 1: of like you could think of other pairings that this

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Speaker 1: this applies to, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who

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Speaker 1: will come up later, or Paul Allen and Bill Gates.

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Speaker 1: I mean there are a lot of diff Ben and Jerry,

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Speaker 1: uh Itchy and Scratchy. We can just keep throwing out

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Speaker 1: pair of names out there. Uh So, yeah, it was,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was the beginning of a partnership that

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Speaker 1: would end up launching this arcade industry idea. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: they got together and they they said, well, let's sort

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Speaker 1: of copy that game in a in a cabinet version.

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Speaker 1: But we don't really have the money to fund this,

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Speaker 1: so they took it to a few different people, finally

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Speaker 1: landed at a place called Nutting Associates, who agreed to

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Speaker 1: finance a game which was really the very first arcade

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Speaker 1: game called computer Space Yep, yep. They got a programmer

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Speaker 1: by the name of Larry Brian to come on board.

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Speaker 1: Larry Brian had also worked at Ampex. Uh. They formed

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Speaker 1: a company that they originally called sissy G. Yeah. They

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Speaker 1: just said the name kind of sounded and look cool. Yeah, which,

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Speaker 1: by the way, if you if you don't know how

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Speaker 1: to spell it, it's it's of course one of those

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Speaker 1: uh spelling B words. It's s y z y g

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Speaker 1: y and it refers to the planetary alignment when things

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Speaker 1: come into alignment there in sissy G. I didn't know

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Speaker 1: that it was one of my my father's one of

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Speaker 1: my father's favorite words, no joke. Uh, so I was

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Speaker 1: instilled in my brain at an early age. They come

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Speaker 1: up with this name, which they wouldn't stick with for

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Speaker 1: reasons we'll get to. Uh. They thought about using a

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Speaker 1: computer called the Data General Nova eight hundred, but it's

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Speaker 1: pretty expensive and it still wasn't really going to fit

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Speaker 1: their needs, so they weren't really sure how they were

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Speaker 1: going to do this. Originally, the idea was all three

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Speaker 1: of the initial founding members, Dabney Bushnell and Brian were

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Speaker 1: going to contribute a hundred dollars into a group fund

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Speaker 1: to be like the owner operating capital. Only Dabney and

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Speaker 1: Bushnell did. Brian never did. So do you know why

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Speaker 1: he was it because he didn't want to. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I I never came across. It was just a lot

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Speaker 1: of matter of fact of Brian never put him. It's

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Speaker 1: just never an explanation. Yeah. And so eventually both Bushnell

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Speaker 1: and and uh Dabney would put in an extra two

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Speaker 1: hundred and fiftyes. So that brought the owner's equity up

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Speaker 1: to a incredible seven dollars princely some for this company. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And like you were saying, Chuck, they went to Nothing

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Speaker 1: to say, like, uh, maybe you can help us by

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Speaker 1: manufacturing this thing. Will retain the rights to the game.

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Speaker 1: You'll be able to manufacture it and sell it, but

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Speaker 1: we get royalties for it as well. And it's the

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Speaker 1: next big thing. Yeah. They convinced Nutting that's next big.

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Speaker 1: So Nothing Associates has no clue about this stuff. They

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Speaker 1: essentially give them the space to do whatever they want

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Speaker 1: to do, thinking like all right, well we we can't

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Speaker 1: do this ourselves. We're gonna let this group do this

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Speaker 1: and if it pays off, it's huge. We'll be making

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Speaker 1: lots of money. And if it doesn't, well it we'll

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Speaker 1: just call it a loss. So the agreement included a

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Speaker 1: five percent royalty on unit sales, so that's what the

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Speaker 1: group would get um. And the units were relatively inexpensive.

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Speaker 1: They were like a thousand dollars, which in today's money

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Speaker 1: is about six grand a piece. But it was it

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Speaker 1: was not for the home consumer. It was this like

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Speaker 1: the yeah, exactly, this would be like a restaurant, you

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Speaker 1: know that's or maybe a bowling alley something like that.

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Speaker 1: But remember there's no market for these yet. Yeah, no

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Speaker 1: one knows because they didn't exist. It's just crazy to

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Speaker 1: think about. No one knew if it was going to

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Speaker 1: work at all, and it sort of didn't, sort of didn't.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't a big success for them at all, right, Right,

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Speaker 1: And the one of the part probably was was that

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Speaker 1: this game that was based off Space War, just like

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Speaker 1: Space War, was kind of complicated. It was a game

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Speaker 1: built by engineers for engineers. So you see like all

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Speaker 1: these buttons and dials and stuff, and you think, all right, uh,

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Speaker 1: this does not appear to be intuitive in any No

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Speaker 1: one really understood how to play it. It looked a

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Speaker 1: little like Asteroids. Yeah. Um, as far as just the

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Speaker 1: look of the game, yeah, And it's one of those

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Speaker 1: that when you look at you think, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: I I don't even know what it is, like how

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Speaker 1: I control the things, nor do I know what I'm

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Speaker 1: supposed to do. So it had some limited success, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a runaway hit. It just wasn't that simplistic

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Speaker 1: experience that the average person could immediately identify. Well yeah,

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Speaker 1: plus it was I mean, uh, I mean people are

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Speaker 1: used to seeing a pinball machine maybe, but if you

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Speaker 1: look up this thing online, there's all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: it seems there. You know, Urcade games to us now,

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Speaker 1: there were so ubiquitous, the game cabinet itself, But when

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Speaker 1: you look at this thing at the time, no one

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Speaker 1: knew what the heck it was. Right there was this

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Speaker 1: weird looking yellow pod right with a TV screen in

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Speaker 1: it in the corner, and I have no idea with

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Speaker 1: all the this little game pad on the front of it,

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Speaker 1: and what am I even supposed to do with that

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Speaker 1: on my way to the bathroom. I mean, the whole

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Speaker 1: thing wouldn't have even been possible except for the fact

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Speaker 1: that Dabney made a breakthrough while he was he was

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Speaker 1: tooling around in his home. According to the interviews I've seen,

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Speaker 1: in his daughter's bedroom. He used that as his workspace.

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Speaker 1: He moved one of his daughters in with the other

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Speaker 1: two daughters. He's like, I need you room. This is

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Speaker 1: going to be my lab. And uh. He started playing

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Speaker 1: with cathode ray to video screens without the use of

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Speaker 1: a computer as as an input, and he used counters

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Speaker 1: and gates basic electronic components to manipulate that CRT display

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Speaker 1: to create the images on a screen that you can

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Speaker 1: control by changing the values directly. So uh, think of

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Speaker 1: you know, you remember the tracking on a TV when

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Speaker 1: the screen would be rolling and you have to adjust

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Speaker 1: the tracking snature. Because we're old, we remember this stuff.

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Speaker 1: That was the basis of him being able to control

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Speaker 1: vertical movement on the screen. He just essentially he manufactured

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Speaker 1: a way of doing that where by using a control

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Speaker 1: you could change the the input into the television and

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Speaker 1: make that vertical movement possible. For horizontal we had to

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Speaker 1: change voltage is in a really interesting way so that

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Speaker 1: you could get horizontal movement. Otherwise you would only be

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Speaker 1: able to move up and down. Now, was that the

360
00:19:34,720 --> 00:19:38,240
Speaker 1: spot in motion circuit? Yes, okay, and that changed everything

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Speaker 1: because this meant for the first time that I, well

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Speaker 1: not I, he could create a game that didn't need

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Speaker 1: a computer attached to it. Right, you could do a

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Speaker 1: home version of this game, yes, exactly, and then everything

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Speaker 1: that you would need for the game you could build

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Speaker 1: onto the circuit And that meant that every circuit for

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Speaker 1: every game was unique, right, Like like one, if you

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Speaker 1: look at two different arcade games from this era, the

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Speaker 1: game is all hardwired on the circuitry, and those circuit

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Speaker 1: boards are going to look different because it's those physical

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Speaker 1: components that create the assets of each game, which is

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Speaker 1: kind of cool to think about because these days we're

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Speaker 1: used to the general purpose machine, right, the computer, and

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Speaker 1: then everything else is controlled on the software side. But

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Speaker 1: this was all hardware, which you know for every game

376
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Speaker 1: was a little different from the next two. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And you look at it you think like, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: there could even be production errors in that that could

379
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Speaker 1: create weird glitches that are only for that unit of

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Speaker 1: the game. It's not like a game shipped with glitches

381
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:47,280
Speaker 1: would be that many. Maybe some solder wasn't complete and

382
00:20:47,320 --> 00:20:50,320
Speaker 1: so something in the game's not working properly. So it

383
00:20:50,359 --> 00:20:54,000
Speaker 1: made it more like those early arcading machines. We're really

384
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Speaker 1: more like pinball games than they were like the modern games.

385
00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:02,159
Speaker 1: Um yeah, really are staying We get to August of

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. That's when the team had produced the

387
00:21:04,880 --> 00:21:07,440
Speaker 1: test unit of their game, which was, as you were saying,

388
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Speaker 1: called Computer Space, and they set it up in a

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Speaker 1: in a restaurant and bar called Dutch Goose in Palo Alto, California.

390
00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:19,639
Speaker 1: What a great name. They officially debuted the game at

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy one Music and Amusement Machines Exposition in Chicago,

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Speaker 1: and by the end of nineteen seventy one they begin

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Speaker 1: to ship the game. So that first game was just

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Speaker 1: sort of a test run to see if they could

395
00:21:30,760 --> 00:21:32,760
Speaker 1: get it to to Look now, it doesn't do great

396
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Speaker 1: business because it was a units total sold yeah um,

397
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Speaker 1: but it was enough money um for for Dabney and

398
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Speaker 1: Bushnell to sort of continue to fund their company. Right.

399
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Speaker 1: They decided at that point that they wanted to incorporate

400
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Speaker 1: Sissy G and then they had a speed bump because

401
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 1: they realized I found out there was already another company

402
00:21:55,640 --> 00:21:57,800
Speaker 1: using the name sissy Gy. Yeah, apparently it was a

403
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:02,840
Speaker 1: little candle company and Mendocino, California like some hippies, So

404
00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:05,880
Speaker 1: that that put their plans on pause as they had

405
00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:08,960
Speaker 1: to rethink the name. And also at that time, in

406
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, Bushnell would attend a meeting that would

407
00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:16,159
Speaker 1: later come back to haunt him. Yeah, he attended a

408
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:21,000
Speaker 1: meeting that had a presentation of the Magnavox Odyssey, which

409
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 1: is a home video game console that featured very several

410
00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:29,680
Speaker 1: silent games, the most notable one being a table tennis game. Yeah,

411
00:22:29,760 --> 00:22:31,960
Speaker 1: and who was it was? It was the man's name

412
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:35,600
Speaker 1: Bear was the head of Magnavox. At the time, he

413
00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:37,359
Speaker 1: had been a thing called the brown Box, which was

414
00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 1: later changed to the Magnavox Odyssey. And like you said,

415
00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:43,600
Speaker 1: I think a lesson to be learned here. Has never

416
00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:48,120
Speaker 1: signed the guest book because Bushnell um signed the guest

417
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:51,520
Speaker 1: Book as an attendee. And these before they took the

418
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:55,040
Speaker 1: Odyssey to market, they had these very special small batch

419
00:22:55,200 --> 00:23:01,600
Speaker 1: screenings for invitees only, and which wasn't the smartest thing

420
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:03,920
Speaker 1: in the world to do either, Yeah, because they did

421
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:05,720
Speaker 1: have a patent on it. It would allow people that

422
00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:07,959
Speaker 1: chance to maybe we could beat them to market by

423
00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:10,760
Speaker 1: creating exact similar and that's exactly what happened in the

424
00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:14,680
Speaker 1: case of Bushnell. Yeah, so this was like this would

425
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:17,080
Speaker 1: come back to haunt him later. And yeah, if you

426
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:19,080
Speaker 1: are going to go to one of these meetings, don't

427
00:23:19,119 --> 00:23:22,880
Speaker 1: leave a paper trail. That's that's the lesson there. So

428
00:23:23,080 --> 00:23:27,600
Speaker 1: by June, Bushnell and Damney incorporate as a Tory Incorporated. Yes,

429
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 1: which the name got came from a Japanese game board

430
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:35,399
Speaker 1: game called Go, which Bushnell was just crazy for. And

431
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:38,760
Speaker 1: apparently the meaning of it is basically the equivalent to

432
00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: I've got you in check. I'm about to take all

433
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,440
Speaker 1: your stones, is what he said, right right, And and

434
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 1: I think the the root word was a taru, which

435
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,560
Speaker 1: means to hit a target. And uh, just a cool

436
00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: sounding name, like it jumped out at him at the time.

437
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:57,560
Speaker 1: It's like, I like it, right, And they they create

438
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:01,760
Speaker 1: some common stock, which collectively would value the company at

439
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:05,680
Speaker 1: about seventy five thousand dollars, big jump from the seven

440
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 1: hundred dollars that they had to the bank at the time. Uh.

441
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:11,320
Speaker 1: And the famous Attari logo I didn't put this in

442
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:13,120
Speaker 1: the notes, but it was designed by a game named

443
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:17,119
Speaker 1: George Opperman. Now, according to Auberman, the two side pieces,

444
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,160
Speaker 1: like if you look at the Atari logo, it's it's

445
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:22,440
Speaker 1: got three kind of columns, the two on either side

446
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,840
Speaker 1: sore slope away. I always wonder what that was. It's

447
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: a stylized A. So that's one thing. Some people call

448
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:32,200
Speaker 1: it the Mount Fuji logo because I think it looks

449
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: like Mount Fuji. Apperman says. The two side pieces represented

450
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:39,959
Speaker 1: opposing players in the middle straight section represented the center

451
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:43,640
Speaker 1: line in pong, which is kind of cool. The whole

452
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:46,439
Speaker 1: logo was that stylized day and Auberman was the in

453
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: house artist for Atari and created a lot of the

454
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:52,920
Speaker 1: art that the arcade cabinets were you were sporting. Well,

455
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 1: it's certainly iconic now, you know. Yeah, you see that

456
00:24:55,760 --> 00:24:57,879
Speaker 1: logo and it just for Guy's our age, that just

457
00:24:57,920 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 1: really conjures up a lot. Well, yeah, and he and

458
00:24:59,840 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 1: he he had a big influence on that early artwork

459
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:05,959
Speaker 1: of Atari, especially in the arcade world. He would sadly

460
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 1: pass away in nineteen Yeah, only fifty years old, I think, um.

461
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 1: But also in June of that year, Al Alcorn who

462
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: had worked at Ampex. Yes, he joins Atari and he

463
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 1: begins working on one of Atari's biggest hits, Pong, which

464
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:27,120
Speaker 1: is odd in a way. It's odd for a couple

465
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:30,440
Speaker 1: of reasons, the biggest one being no one ever intended

466
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:33,200
Speaker 1: Pong to be a hit. Yeah. Bushonell at the time

467
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: was working on a driving game. He said that was

468
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 1: really hard. Uh, driving games still are I think one

469
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:42,119
Speaker 1: of the tougher ones to get right to really nail. Yeah,

470
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 1: And he said he hired Alcorn and was like, well,

471
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: I just wanted to give him a little test to

472
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 1: see how good he was because I wasn't gonna throw

473
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: him on this driving game right away up for failure.

474
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 1: Can you program using this circuit that damn produced, right

475
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: And because this is this is a whole new thing,

476
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 1: like the designing game using this circuit that had been

477
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 1: pioneered for the computer space games. So, uh, you know,

478
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 1: Alcorn takes this concept and he works on on Pong.

479
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:15,440
Speaker 1: And unlike the earlier table tennis electronic games, this one

480
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:19,679
Speaker 1: had sound. It sounds so silly, but it was a

481
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 1: huge difference to actually hear that little boom boom boom,

482
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: and uh, it had a few other noteworthy characteristics to

483
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: differentiate it that also sound a little bit like of course,

484
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: but it really made a big difference. The ball sped

485
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,679
Speaker 1: up as you played the game, which was a huge,

486
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: huge difference. Um. And then you talked about some of

487
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 1: these sort of happy accidents. One of them occurred with Pong.

488
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: There was that little space at the very top and

489
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: the bottom of the screen where you couldn't block and

490
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,680
Speaker 1: in other words, a game couldn't go on forever. At

491
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,119
Speaker 1: some point you were going to lose it to that

492
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:57,439
Speaker 1: corner some at some bounce, it's going to hit that

493
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: trajectory where no matter what, you can't block it, and

494
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 1: it just it made it more fun. And it was

495
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 1: a two player game, so again it'll it pitched people

496
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: against each other, just like we were talking about with combat.

497
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 1: That creates an experience that just invites that kind of

498
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:15,920
Speaker 1: fun sort of you know, one upsmanship, trash talking sort

499
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:20,320
Speaker 1: of stuff. Nothing. I don't think anyone was making, you know,

500
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 1: horrible uh statements like you hear on something like Xbox

501
00:27:24,119 --> 00:27:27,400
Speaker 1: Live because you're in person, next to the next to whomever.

502
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: But it also was a much simpler game. It was

503
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: easy to grasp the controls, were simple. Everyone who saw

504
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: it knew exactly what the gameplay went, so it had

505
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 1: far greater reppeal than something that was much more dense

506
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: like computer space. Yeah, and the name obviously comes from

507
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:49,879
Speaker 1: Ping Pong, but they couldn't call it ping pong, and

508
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: they couldn't call it ping because of the golf clubs,

509
00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:56,160
Speaker 1: and so Pong was just sort of the no brainer. Yeah.

510
00:27:56,560 --> 00:28:01,879
Speaker 1: So the first Pong game was installed in a tavern

511
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: and the taps tavern. Yeah. I look that up to

512
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:08,359
Speaker 1: see if it still existed, and I don't think it does, sad. Uh.

513
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: So the original Pong was black and white, had a

514
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: black and white television for a screen, and people would

515
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: come in and play, even if they weren't planning on

516
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: buying anything to eat or drink. It became a destination

517
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 1: h game. Yeah, to the point where I read that

518
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: early in the game's life, they got a call saying,

519
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: the game's not working. You need to come out here

520
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:32,719
Speaker 1: in services. So it came out to find out what

521
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:34,880
Speaker 1: was wrong, and what was wrong was that they were

522
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:38,600
Speaker 1: using an old milk jug to catch the coins inside

523
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: the cabinet, and the milk jug had filled to overflowing

524
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: and no more coins could come in, so the game

525
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 1: was malfunctioned, so they had to empty the coins from

526
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: the things that they could play it. Uh and uh.

527
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: It was kind of interesting like this. We'll talk more

528
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 1: about in the second but the the plan was that

529
00:28:56,320 --> 00:29:00,280
Speaker 1: in order to give an incentive to businesses to buy

530
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 1: into the arcade games, they said, all right, well, we

531
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:07,760
Speaker 1: will split revenue down the middle, goes to you, comes

532
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: to us, which literally, we will count out the quarters

533
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: and will get half of them. And they literally went

534
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 1: from place to place employees of Atari picking up sack

535
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: fulls of quarters at the end of every year, possibly

536
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: suffering enormous back pain, one of whom apparently carried a

537
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: roofing hatchet for protection. Um. But they were bringing in.

538
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: They said a single unit typically would earn about forty

539
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: dollars a day, which is over two hundred and twenty

540
00:29:33,960 --> 00:29:38,920
Speaker 1: dollars today, um, which is that's fantastic for the first

541
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: thing of its kind. And um. It said that they

542
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: believe machines were ordered by the end of nineteen seventy three.

543
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy four, over eight thousand of these were

544
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: all over the country and abroad. I think at this point, Yeah,

545
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: and and keep in mind these are like, you know,

546
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: a grand apiece, and they're getting uh, they're getting this,

547
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 1: this all of the money at this point because originally

548
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: they went to uh Nutting and said do you want

549
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: to do this? And they thought, well, no, we don't

550
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 1: really want to work with Nutting anymore. We want to

551
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: be able to do this with someone else. They they

552
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: started shopping around to see if they could work with

553
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 1: a different distributor of of games, like like the kind

554
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 1: of games you would find at an amusement park. So

555
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: they look at Bally because Bally of course was famous

556
00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: for their pinball as well as there are other there

557
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: are other games that they were pioneering in, but Bally

558
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: wasn't wasn't sold on the idea pong. They wanted Atrii

559
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: to make a game for them, in fact, a couple

560
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: of games. One would be a pinball game and one

561
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: would be a video game, but they weren't interested in Pong.

562
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 1: And ultimately the guys that Attari decided, you know what,

563
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this ourselves. But it was a huge,

564
00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: huge jump for them, you know, they didn't have the

565
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: background and manufacturing. No, it turned out to be a

566
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: great move. Though, Yeah, no, it's absolutely it. It really

567
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: set them for success for at least the next couple

568
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: of years. So some interesting things happened in nineteen seventy three,

569
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 1: at the tail end of seventy two, Atari would file

570
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 1: a patent for Pong. Now keep in mind that when

571
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: you file a patent it can take years before you

572
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 1: get you know, that approved or declined. And it was

573
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: already released at this point when they filed. Yes, they

574
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: didn't pre file, so they file after the games already released. Uh.

575
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:26,959
Speaker 1: In ninety three, they do something that at first I

576
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 1: was confused about until I read more details, which is

577
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: that they established a second company called Key Games k E. Yeah,

578
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: I didn't quite understand this all right, So they set

579
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 1: up a second company that's essentially appears to be in

580
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:45,040
Speaker 1: a competitor to Atari. Not just a competitor, but they

581
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 1: are producing knockoffs of Atari games. And here's the reason why.

582
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 1: There are rules for certain types of companies where they

583
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 1: can only work with a single distributor. So if they

584
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: create a title and and enter an agreement with that distributor, UH,

585
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: all of their titles have to go through that distributor.

586
00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:12,120
Speaker 1: So it limits the options of the company producing the games.

587
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: By creating this second company, they could produce the exact

588
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: same games with a different name under the name of

589
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 1: this other dummy corporation. Practically it's a little more than

590
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 1: a dummy corporation, but not much more, and then offer

591
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: that to different distributors. That makes sense, So it opens

592
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: up a lot of options. So it's a little bit, yeah,

593
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: a little little little uh spoken mirrors a little bit

594
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:39,200
Speaker 1: of guests which cup the ball is under sort of stuff,

595
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: and so you know, it was the way of getting

596
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 1: around that. Bushnell, by the way, clearly very savvy when

597
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: it comes to working systems like this. Meanwhile, Long is

598
00:32:52,560 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: going crazy. Yeah, it's going crazy for for many reasons

599
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: that we already talked about. But um, another big reason

600
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:01,840
Speaker 1: I saw the interview with Bushnell said is that women

601
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:05,720
Speaker 1: were very good at it for some reason, and it

602
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: appealed to women. And it was the first, um, I

603
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 1: guess sort of the first time he said that women

604
00:33:11,480 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 1: felt comfortable going up to a man in a bar

605
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 1: and say, hey, you know, do you want to play

606
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: this game with me? And he said that made a

607
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: big difference. It appealed to both sexes and UM, and

608
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: it also brought it down, as the this great I

609
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: g N article says, to you know, where real people

610
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: congregated it, brought it into the bars, into the bowling alleys.

611
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like you know, engineering students exactly. It wasn't.

612
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: It wasn't some computer lab where you had to have uh,

613
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: you know, student access to eat. Another interesting thing that

614
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:49,920
Speaker 1: happened in nine was that they got a new space

615
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:53,600
Speaker 1: for putting together their pong machines. Did you hear about this?

616
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: The ten thousand square foot space they got. So there

617
00:33:57,680 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 1: was one story that Dabney told about how originally the

618
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: little space they were in they found out that their

619
00:34:04,600 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 1: neighbor had stopped paying rent and essentially scaddled, So they

620
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 1: cut a hole in the wall and used the next

621
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:14,959
Speaker 1: door space. But even that wasn't big enough because then

622
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: they were like, well, what happens when we get caughts

623
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 1: as well? We'll just ask how much we owe them,

624
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:21,239
Speaker 1: Like when we get caught, we'll we'll pay for it,

625
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,360
Speaker 1: but until then we won't um. But then they decided

626
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: that they would lease a space, and they found an

627
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 1: a business that was no longer doing this is it

628
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: was ten thou square foot roller rink and they turned

629
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:40,440
Speaker 1: it into their manufacturing center for pong. Yeah, and then

630
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:46,360
Speaker 1: there's the story about how that that that signed guest

631
00:34:46,680 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: thing comes back to haunt and see Magnifox yes for

632
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 1: electronic table tennis. So Atari did not have a patent

633
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 1: for pong. Magnavox had a patent for electronic table tennis.

634
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 1: And this starts to raise some important conversations between the

635
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:06,320
Speaker 1: two where Magnavox is looking at pong and saying, that's

636
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 1: our game, So we're going to go after these guys. Meanwhile,

637
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: Bushnell buys out Ted Dabney from the company. Depending upon

638
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: whom you aske, Dabney sometimes just says no, I was

639
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: just kind of canned. Yeah. He says that he was

640
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: forced out basically that his old friend came up to

641
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: him and basically said, um, if you don't accept this

642
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: buy out, then I'm going to take all the assets

643
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:33,399
Speaker 1: over to a different company and you'll you'll be left

644
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: with nothing, right, So he took the opportunity to get

645
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:38,479
Speaker 1: bought out. I didn't see numbers. Yeah I didn't either.

646
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone has ever about it. It It sounds like,

647
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 1: yeah the the interview, definitely he portrays Bushnell as misrepresenting

648
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 1: the truth. Let's say that's a very kind way of

649
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:51,600
Speaker 1: putting it. And I haven't heard Bushnell talk much about it.

650
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 1: He seems to, I don't know, gloss over that, or

651
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 1: at least not even address it. Yeah, that's from what

652
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:00,799
Speaker 1: I've seen. Well. Uh, nineteen seven three was also when

653
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:03,800
Speaker 1: Atari got a new hire in the electrical engineering department.

654
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: You may have heard of him. His name is Steve Jobs.

655
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: So Steve Jobs joined Atari in nineteen seventy three, and

656
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 1: by the end of the year, Key Games in Atari,

657
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: which remember are really being operated simultaneously by the same

658
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:21,080
Speaker 1: heads of people, into a licensing agreement for Atari to

659
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: produce a version of the game Elimination, which was key

660
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 1: games first first title. Yeah, and by the way, can

661
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,399
Speaker 1: you guess do you want to guess what the game

662
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 1: Elimination was? The title makes it sound like it's something terrible.

663
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: It was not. It was not. It was a four

664
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: player version of Pong, and so uh, the Atari version

665
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:48,240
Speaker 1: would become known as Quadrapong. So it's funny that Atari

666
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:53,320
Speaker 1: is licensing a game that essentially the same folks had developed, right, Like,

667
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 1: it's all again, it's all this sort of shell game

668
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 1: going on. So moving up to nineteen seventy four, this

669
00:36:58,719 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: is where we start seeing the Magnavox thing come to

670
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:06,240
Speaker 1: a head. The inventor Ralph Bayer convinces Magnavox to sue Atari,

671
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,439
Speaker 1: claiming that the company copied the electronic table tennis game

672
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: from the Odyssey, which they did, Yeah, pretty much, And

673
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,919
Speaker 1: Bushnell basically comes up. The guy makes all the right moves,

674
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 1: it seems like for a while. Um he basically says,

675
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:24,399
Speaker 1: you know what, We'll settle for some money and will

676
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 1: become a licensee, so you don't have to worry about us.

677
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: You go and sue everybody else because Paul was getting

678
00:37:31,200 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 1: knocked off all over the place, and you spend all

679
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: your time doing that. We'll settle for some money, will

680
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:37,879
Speaker 1: be a licensee, and we'll make that and some other

681
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 1: Magnavox titles, and just don't worry about us anymore. And

682
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: Magnavox is like, all right, yeah, it was good to me, brilliant.

683
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 1: I mean, they no longer Atari no longer has to

684
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:52,360
Speaker 1: go after these copycats because Magnavox is going to do

685
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: it on their behalf and they're not being h come

686
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: after for Magna Yeah, so the settlement shield basically exactly

687
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: set the amount. We don't it's not publicized, but according

688
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: to different accounts, it could be anywhere between four thousand

689
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:09,160
Speaker 1: dollars and a million bucks, so not chump change. But

690
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: still when you when you know now you've got like

691
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:14,400
Speaker 1: your big brother looking out for you, you don't know,

692
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:17,560
Speaker 1: it's they can just make money, exactly. It freed them

693
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 1: up to be super creative. Uh. And that's what they

694
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 1: started doing right away pretty much. Yeah. And this is

695
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: also the year Dabney, who had who had left, buys

696
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 1: the name the rights to the name Scissor G Game

697
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:33,960
Speaker 1: Company from Atari. Uh. And then he also would leave

698
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 1: the board of directors in nineteen seventy four, which was

699
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: his last connection to the company that by that time

700
00:38:39,680 --> 00:38:44,600
Speaker 1: Dabney's connections are now severed. Uh. And then meanwhile Key

701
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:49,239
Speaker 1: Games releases its first original game called Tank, which ends

702
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:53,919
Speaker 1: up being a massive hit. Uh. And then so such

703
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: a big hit, keep in my nineteen Tank comes out,

704
00:38:58,600 --> 00:39:01,280
Speaker 1: the demand is so high they go ahead and develop

705
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: and produce Tank two in that same year. Like you

706
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:06,760
Speaker 1: think about how video games are produced and how granted

707
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: it's a totally different ball game, these days. But the

708
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 1: way video games are produced these days, they go in

709
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:13,759
Speaker 1: for years of development. If you get a game, and

710
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 1: you won't expect a sequel for several years to come,

711
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: unless with a few exceptions like the Assassin's Creed series

712
00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:22,280
Speaker 1: appears to have a sequel come out every few months.

713
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 1: Certain sports franchise games obviously those are gonna come out

714
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: each year to reflect the change. Yeah, but most most games,

715
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: you know, you end up waiting years between sequels. But

716
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: this is where things are just moving at a furious pace.

717
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:38,880
Speaker 1: Now that we have the home version of Pong yet

718
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:42,799
Speaker 1: not well, there were some early home versions. There was

719
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:46,280
Speaker 1: one that was being developed at this time and actually

720
00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:48,800
Speaker 1: did come out. Yeah, So there were actually two different

721
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 1: versions of that, right, Sears licensed it. I had that one,

722
00:39:52,719 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 1: so you had the Sears version of Pon Yeah, and

723
00:39:55,640 --> 00:39:57,959
Speaker 1: then there was a second one that was marketed under

724
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: the Atari name. So again it was weird because it

725
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: almost felt like Atari was competing against itself and had

726
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: two different versions of the same thing on the market. Yeah. Well,

727
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 1: because they didn't have that patent yet, I think so

728
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: Sears was the distributor and they had their own version. Yeah,

729
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:13,800
Speaker 1: and I think that I think the other versions outsold

730
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 1: the official Pong version. Oh yeah, the Atari. I think

731
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: Atari had like fifty thousand of them on the market

732
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:21,839
Speaker 1: and Sears had a hundred and fifty thousand of them.

733
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,839
Speaker 1: Those you know, easily eclipsing it. But yeah, that ended

734
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 1: up being a big hit that would come out in nineteen.

735
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,319
Speaker 1: It was limited to only playing the Pong games that was.

736
00:40:33,719 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: This was not a cartridge. Yeah, so it's all again,

737
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: it's hard coded into the console, right y. Yeah. I

738
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,839
Speaker 1: I had UM, I don't I had I had one

739
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:49,319
Speaker 1: that was I don't think it was Pong um, and

740
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: I don't think it was. It wasn't the Magnavox Odyssey,

741
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: because I seemed to remember there were sound effects. But

742
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: I did have one that was the collection of essentially variations,

743
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: and Pong Pong was one, but you also had Racketball,

744
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 1: which was Pong but way faster. Um. Then there was

745
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 1: one that was basketball that was essentially Pong, but it

746
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:12,760
Speaker 1: was turned so that both paddles were maybe two inches

747
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,800
Speaker 1: above the bottom line, and then you had like little

748
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:20,680
Speaker 1: lines that represented goals. Yeah. Interest like there's there's a

749
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: whole selection of these style games, but they're all just

750
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:27,040
Speaker 1: variations on an exactly. So I had one of those

751
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 1: I don't know if hey, listeners, if you know what

752
00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:32,359
Speaker 1: I'm talking about and you think, oh, that sounds like

753
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:36,400
Speaker 1: the blah blah blah, Yeah, you just let me know. Um.

754
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: But this is also around the time when Atari would

755
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: announce the acquisition of Key Games, that Tory buys its

756
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 1: own company. Joe Keenan became Joe Keenan, who remember was

757
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 1: the head of Key Games. He's also Bushnell's neighbor. Yeah.

758
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:57,879
Speaker 1: According to the story Dabney Toldy says, yeah. Bush Nell

759
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 1: says he walked up to Joe one day when Joe

760
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: was mowing his law and said, Hey, would you like

761
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 1: to run a company that looks like it's competing against me?

762
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:11,640
Speaker 1: Need a shell company owner because company, but Joe Keenan

763
00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 1: would actually become the new president of Atari and Nolan

764
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: Bushnell was becomes the chairman of of Atari. UH. And

765
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: this is also when at starts working on a project

766
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: code named Stella yea, again a home market approach. So

767
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 1: two developments make this possible. One is the production of

768
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:33,120
Speaker 1: a microchip called the Moss Technology six oh five to

769
00:42:33,360 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: micro processor UH and then the other one was creating

770
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: the methodology of storing games on ROM cartridges. ROM stands

771
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 1: for read only memory, right, So this is why if

772
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:50,399
Speaker 1: you had one of those old cartridge based systems, uh,

773
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let you do things like keep track of

774
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: your high score. For example, you plug your cartridgeen and

775
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,279
Speaker 1: you could get a high score, but as soon as

776
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: you turned the sheen off, that's erased. Because it was

777
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: read only memory couldn't write anything. So the console would

778
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:11,480
Speaker 1: have all the stuff that would allow it to accept

779
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:14,799
Speaker 1: these cartridges. But the beauty of it was you were

780
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: not limited to a select number of titles. As long

781
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:19,839
Speaker 1: as more cartridge as would come out, you could play

782
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: different games. Yeah. And uh, you know we should set

783
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 1: the scene here in the early to mid nineties seventies. Um,

784
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 1: there was not a lot of options as a child. Um,

785
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: you had crappy handheld games, Tiger electronics type stuff. Yep.

786
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:38,480
Speaker 1: You had um a few TV channels that you could

787
00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 1: watch three maybe four if you could get a UHF

788
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: stations pre Fox even Yeah, just the big three, ABC,

789
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: B NBC, and CBS. UM, and there were you know,

790
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: all the all the games were like uh, you know,

791
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:54,280
Speaker 1: there were card games and and you know or actually

792
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:58,239
Speaker 1: playing outside with your friends, which was great, but but

793
00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 1: there was not a lot. There weren't many options. So

794
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 1: home computing in the home video console was to call

795
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:08,399
Speaker 1: it revolutionary. There isn't a word big enough to call

796
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: it what it was, right, And so keep in mind

797
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 1: this is this is the dawn of two eras that

798
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: are coming about at the same time. They're both about

799
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 1: to change children's worlds forever. One is that the arcade

800
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: is on the horizon, like not not not just the

801
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 1: you know, occasional game in a bar or restaurant or

802
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 1: bowling out. Yeah, and they had arcades previously, but like

803
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,440
Speaker 1: we said, it was pinball and yeah, Skei ball and

804
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:37,400
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Right, So the video the video arcade

805
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: is just about to come to pass, and the home

806
00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:43,760
Speaker 1: video game market is about to come to pass. Suddenly

807
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:47,320
Speaker 1: we have way more options than uh, you know, finding

808
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:49,760
Speaker 1: out who's really good at getting hit with a stick?

809
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: That was That was my favorite game as a kid.

810
00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: I was really good at that game. I could get

811
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: hit by a stick like. Uh. So, nineteen seventies six

812
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:04,839
Speaker 1: we get a game coming out from Atari called Breakout.

813
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:09,320
Speaker 1: Yeah designed, um, well, we thought it was designed and

814
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:12,920
Speaker 1: perfected by Steve Jobs because he was the employee assigned

815
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: to that job. Yeah, Bushnell and Bristow. Steve Bristow, who

816
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: was another employee of Atari, came up with the concept

817
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 1: and gave it to Steve Jobs and said, make this

818
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: thing that we thought of essentially kind of a racquetball

819
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: style game. And so Jobs goes back, does some work,

820
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: comes back with a circuit board and says I did it,

821
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:36,200
Speaker 1: and they hook it up. They're like, wow, this is great. Yeah,

822
00:45:36,239 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 1: in fact, it's so great. You have done such a

823
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: good job designing this where you've created a really efficient system,

824
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: Like we would have thought that you would have to use,

825
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,319
Speaker 1: you know, a dozen or more other processors to get

826
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 1: this done, but you've managed to make a really elegant

827
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:53,080
Speaker 1: solution to it. We're going to give you a bonus.

828
00:45:53,120 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 1: Here's an extra five grand. Yeah. And he was like

829
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: a uh yeah. And that friend was it was maybe

830
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: a little bit more responsible than I let on. Yeah,

831
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,879
Speaker 1: there's this guy I know. I went to college with him.

832
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 1: He works for HP. His name is Steve. Wasn't he

833
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: really suff he made this thing? So? Yeah, wasn't he?

834
00:46:11,719 --> 00:46:16,880
Speaker 1: AC actually built the integrated circuit that was used in Breakout,

835
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 1: and Breakout was and it is still a great game.

836
00:46:19,560 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 1: It's another one of those that holds up. It really

837
00:46:21,600 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: does very challenging, great gameplay. It's still a challenge. And

838
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:28,720
Speaker 1: then uh, and then as soon as this success hit Jobs,

839
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 1: he said, all right, guys, see you that he and

840
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: Wasniak and a person who was one of the um

841
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:38,280
Speaker 1: developers over at Atari all go to form a little

842
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:41,040
Speaker 1: company called Apple. That's right. It took them a couple

843
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:43,960
Speaker 1: of years to get things going, but they of course

844
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: would end up kind of repeating the success that Attari

845
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: was seeing in the video game market with the personal

846
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: computer market. So in a way, you could think of

847
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: Atari as being at least partially responsible not just for

848
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 1: the video game industry, but also the personal computer industry,

849
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: because otherwise Jobs might not have had the the inspiration

850
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: in the capital to really go out and say, let's

851
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,480
Speaker 1: do this thing. So it's kind of cool. Um Bushnell,

852
00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 1: by the way, decides he is time, it's ready, he's

853
00:47:18,760 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 1: ready to cash out. Well, yeah, I mean one of

854
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: the problems was they had this great idea for the

855
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:28,880
Speaker 1: vcs or what would become the AT and they couldn't

856
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 1: really fund it to the extent that they needed to

857
00:47:31,680 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: scale this thing, and so he wanted to cash out,

858
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: cash in and just have a little more uh backing basically,

859
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:44,240
Speaker 1: and so he made the well, it's pretty interesting decision

860
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:46,440
Speaker 1: in the long run to sell to warners. Yeah, he

861
00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 1: sells to Warrant Communications for twenty eight million dollars. He

862
00:47:50,600 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: walks away with fifteen million of that. Yeah, and they

863
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: all of a sudden. Um. I saw an interview with

864
00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:57,919
Speaker 1: al Alcorn that was he was like, we had real

865
00:47:57,960 --> 00:47:59,839
Speaker 1: money in the bank for the first time. He said,

866
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: we had backing, and we had we felt safe. But um,

867
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:08,840
Speaker 1: here's the problem. Atari was a a very fun company

868
00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:13,400
Speaker 1: to work for. Likely like have you seen Wolf of

869
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:15,920
Speaker 1: Wall Street? Because I have a feeling that Atari was

870
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 1: really was. They said, Um, there were a lot of

871
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:24,360
Speaker 1: marijuana smoking. They called an MRB session Marijuana Review board. Um.

872
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 1: He said. One of the developers in the interview that

873
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 1: I saw today said we basically sit around and get

874
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 1: high and brainstorm games. Um. They said it was the

875
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: day's for sexual harassment. There were a lot of people

876
00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 1: going home with each other in the end of the night,

877
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 1: and then cocaine came onto the scene. Another thing to

878
00:48:39,719 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 1: think about is a lot of these game consoles, if

879
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:45,359
Speaker 1: you or the different projects they have. If you look,

880
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:48,760
Speaker 1: a lot of the the code names are women's names,

881
00:48:48,880 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: and according to most the interviews I've I've seen, the

882
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:56,799
Speaker 1: names were picked from attractive ladies who were receptionists or

883
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:01,760
Speaker 1: secretaries at Atari. Yeah. Really, you know, forward thinking, classy

884
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 1: type stuff. At any rate, you know, Warner Is, Well,

885
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: they changed everything. They're a big corporation. Yeah, that you

886
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:11,719
Speaker 1: couldn't come and go as you pleased anymore. They would

887
00:49:11,719 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: talk about the way they dressed. Um, you were you know,

888
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: like I said, you were responsible for being there at

889
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:19,359
Speaker 1: a certain time every day and leaving at a certain time.

890
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:24,280
Speaker 1: And that did not fly with these creative startup minds. Yeah,

891
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: so it caused a lot of tension. Meanwhile, Bushnell would

892
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,360
Speaker 1: go off to finally really work on a project he

893
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 1: had been thinking about since the early seventies, something that

894
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:36,520
Speaker 1: he really wanted to do. He had this idea of

895
00:49:36,560 --> 00:49:40,239
Speaker 1: creating a destination for families to be like just a

896
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 1: money making machine, a pizza parlor where you would have

897
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,640
Speaker 1: entertainment and electronic games and other like Midway style games,

898
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: and it would just be a license to print money

899
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:55,800
Speaker 1: and that, my friends, is how Chucky Cheese was born. Yeah,

900
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 1: and he um. I saw the interview with Dabney where

901
00:49:58,040 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: he was talking to him about it at first in

902
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 1: Dabney and was like, the pizzas crappy, and in here

903
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 1: it's like, well, I needed to be loud and the

904
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,239
Speaker 1: pizza just has to be mediocre at best. And you

905
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:12,120
Speaker 1: know what, he was right because the pizza was never

906
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 1: good and every one of us loved that place. I

907
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,600
Speaker 1: want I want to do an episode at some point.

908
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:19,640
Speaker 1: Looking I don't know if I can do it because

909
00:50:19,680 --> 00:50:21,480
Speaker 1: I don't know if it really falls into tech stuff,

910
00:50:21,520 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: but I would love to do the story of Chuck

911
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:28,320
Speaker 1: E Cheese and Showbiz Pizza. I grew up knowing Showbiz Pizza,

912
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:33,760
Speaker 1: not Chuck E Cheese. I remember, I remember Showbiz Pizza specifically. Um.

913
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 1: And if you think the two are kind of similar

914
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:38,720
Speaker 1: and you were wondering, I mean, granted they both belonged

915
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 1: to the same entity now, but if you thought the

916
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:43,520
Speaker 1: two were kind of similar, it's because the creators of

917
00:50:43,560 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 1: Showbiz Pizza originally worked on the Chuck E Cheese and

918
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:49,879
Speaker 1: then there was a falling out in a split, so

919
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:53,360
Speaker 1: there was another one in Atlanta called Sergeant Singers. Oh yeah,

920
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I totally for yeah. And I had

921
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 1: a little quick side story here. When I was like twelve,

922
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:05,879
Speaker 1: the new it might have been Showbiz actually opened up

923
00:51:06,360 --> 00:51:09,200
Speaker 1: and for their grand opening they had an invitation only

924
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 1: thing that somehow my dad was an elementary school principle

925
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 1: that got an invitation to this and UH to come

926
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: with his kids. And you basically walk in and everything

927
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:21,399
Speaker 1: was free that night. Wow, so free food. They gave

928
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:24,319
Speaker 1: you the sackfuls of tokens anytime you wanted them, and

929
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: it was literally stands out as one of the best

930
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: nights of my childhood. I still remember it to this

931
00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: day as being like one of the most fun things

932
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 1: I've ever done. I could see that, I mean that

933
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:36,600
Speaker 1: would that would be a dream come true. A free man.

934
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:39,760
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It blew my mind. Well, we have talked

935
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:42,279
Speaker 1: for a long time. We've got a lot more to cover,

936
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:44,799
Speaker 1: but in order to do that, we're going to end here.

937
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: I'm calling it now. I'm looking at the time. It's

938
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:49,799
Speaker 1: over fifty minutes already, so wow, tease it right before

939
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: the release of the I know, we gotta have a

940
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:55,000
Speaker 1: reason for people to come back next week. You get

941
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, we've got tons more to talk about.

942
00:51:57,239 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: I mean, we haven't even left the seventies yet, and

943
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,600
Speaker 1: trust me, like we've got some drama coming up with

944
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: the rise and fall of the video game industry as

945
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:11,920
Speaker 1: a whole, not to mention the crazy corporate shuffling of

946
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 1: the Atari brand, which is kind of heartbreaking, but we

947
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,520
Speaker 1: will we'll address that too. And we've got more to

948
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: talk about as far as just the greatest Attari games ever,

949
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:23,480
Speaker 1: the worst Atari games ever, the ones that you and

950
00:52:23,520 --> 00:52:26,480
Speaker 1: I both played with your kids, and our our reflection

951
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: on that. So make sure you tune in for that. Remember,

952
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:32,919
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes, just send

953
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 1: me a message tech Stuff at how stuffworks dot com

954
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 1: is my email. Drop me a line on Twitter or

955
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: Facebook or tumbler. It's tech stuff h s W at

956
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 1: all three of those. Remember to check out Chuck's work

957
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: on stuff you should know. Yeah, the Pinball episode that

958
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: my interest. Folks listening to this one, sweet, I'll definitely

959
00:52:52,120 --> 00:52:55,239
Speaker 1: tune in for that. Pinball is one of my great passions.

960
00:52:55,520 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go to the Pinball Museum in

961
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:02,240
Speaker 1: Vegas and just lose myself well, that wraps this up. Guys.

962
00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 1: We will talk to you again. Releases for more on

963
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:11,120
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, because it has stuff

964
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 1: works dot com