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Atari Founder Debuts Linux-Based Game Machines
jalefkowit writes "Wired News has a great story about uWink, Nolan Bushnell's new game company. Bushnell is the creator of "Pong" and the man who was behind the early successes of Atari, including the 2600 console and its pioneering stand-up arcade machines. Now he's launched a line of new stand-up, net-connected game machines that are powered by Linux."
Just to clarify Willy Higinbotham invented electronic "tennis for two" (Pong) in 1958, but sought no patent. If he had it would have been property of the federal government since he did it while at his job. There's a scary thought, the US government owning videogames. Ralph Baer did patent his electronic Hockey game (Pong) in 1971 and licensed it to Magnavox. Nolan Bushnell saw Ralph Baer's Hockey game at a trade show and later asked Al Alcorn to create a ball and paddle game (Pong). He did not say where the idea came from. Rumors that Nolan Bushnell did not actually see hockey at the trade show are false. He was there, he played it and HE SIGNED MAGNAVOX'S GUEST BOOK. Duffus. Nolan Bushnell also lied to Al Alcorn about a contract signed with General Electric to sell Pong (GE was never even contacted). Al Alcorn programmed Pong.
Nolan Bushnell does deserve much credit for laboring long and hard to put Spacewar (Computer Space) on smaller cheaper hardware and inventing the first electronic arcade game. And he deserves credit for successfully marketing Pong as an arcade and home game. But he did not invent Pong
... was TouchNet. I found a News.com article from 1996 about it.
He also founded Chuck E. Cheese.
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The GPL only requires that they provide the source to people that they distribute the code to. There is no requirement that they make it available to anyone who asks. And it also means they don't have to provide anything until the ship.
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"Are these registers running Windows?" I asked incredulously when I got to the head of the line.
"Yes," she answered, "that's why they go down so often."
"Hmmmm, mechanical bull or pong?"
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- Linux is good at networking... uWink involves networking a whole bunch of game machines together...
- Linux licenses are free of charge
... Thus making it cheaper to deploy uWink systems ...
- Linux means that uWink does not need to be dependent on Where Microsoft Is Going Today
...
I doubt it involves "free" software in "user space" to any meaningful extent; this proposal sounds pretty much a "poster child" for the scenario where it makes sense to use some sort of "Embedded Linux" to implement a networked graphical system.If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Playing against people across the country in bars and restaurants? Well, if you like trivia, several thousand bars across the US already have NTN trivia which uses a satellite dish and a modem dial up to connect tens of thousands of people at a time to compete in a variety of trivia games. Some of us are hopelessly addicted...
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I heard a story about Nolan's last company. And I'd give you the name if I could remember it. They had a similar product. It was a little set top box, that was meant to be located in bars around the country. They had cute little trivia games and some simple reflex games on it. Basic stuff, but seemed like a reasonable concept.
The machines had some networking support, so they could download new trivia questions and software updates and high scores and things. So, every gamebox shipped with Windows NT on it. They had a custom touch screen driver so you could tap on the screen to push buttons.
As I heard it, everything was going okay, until they got hit by two things. First Microsoft announced some kind of Microsoft based coin-op box. I don't know what ever happened to this. But, it was big competition. Now, the venture capital was a little harder to find.
The second problem they had was that the game machines were all working fine -- that is until Daylight savings time changed. On that day every machine out in the field popped up a dialog box from some driver in Windows NT. Which for some weird reason crashed the machines, and they were no longer able to talk to the central servers. They had to ship out new hard drives to every one they had sold. Ooops.
Maybe they'll have better luck with Linux.
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Its about time coin-op arcade games joined the networked multiplayer arena. By far the most fun coin-ops are the ones where there are multiple machines next to each other (e.g. Sega Rally et. al.), and you can play your friends (and shout at them when they overtake you).
Adding more players over a network could make it even better... if done well.
The logistics are difficult though. On lots of multiplayer games on a PC you end up spending most of your time in the 'lobby' area waiting for a game, or searching for one that you can connect to with reasonable latency. Coin-ops need a quicker, more reliable process of game selection; put your coin in, and play, without any fuss.
As for the credit card aspect of it, well, I don't know. There's something to be said for just putting a coin in, having a quick fun game, and leaving.
From the wired story (emphasis mine):
This seems incredibly short-sighted to me.
To go to all the trouble of creating and marketing these boxes, getting them into the venues, and connecting them without broadband is just silly. Especially since they accuse the industry of remaining in the dark ages....
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but he didn't invent tv ping-pong, anymore than Msft invented 'Windows'. That honor goes to Ralph Baer, excerpt:
On 29th May 1972, Nolan Bushnell (later President of Atari) visits the "Magnavox Profit Caravan" at the Airport Marina Hotel in Burlingame, CA. He signs the guest book for Magnavox Odyssey Demo and plays the Odyssey Ping-Pong game hands-on. Later, he hires Alan Alcorn to design and build a coin-op version of the Ping-Pong game: PONG. This will mark the begining of the coin-op market.
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