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Father of Video Games turning 60
Bill Kendrick writes "Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and the "father of video games" will be turning 60 next week, on February 5th.
Along with Atari, which Bushnell began in 1972 (and left before the end of the decade), he
also founded over 20 other companies, including Chuck E. Cheese
Pizza Time Theater restaurants. He holds many patents relating to both
video games and other industries.
For more on The Bringer of Pong, check out some interviews from the San Jose Mercury, Metroactive and over at Good Deal Games, as well as his Wikipedia entry. Happy birthday, Nolan!"
... but Al Gore would claim he's the father of that.
"Derp de derp."
Damn you Nolan!
The visonary Steve P Jobs got his visonary mandate from Nolan as a game designer at Atari..
:)
Nolan a worth while Moron to know..okay for tha tinside joke see some of his antics..very non mormon
Don't Tread on OpenSource
He's the one to blame for obesity in young children and people with no lives. No this is not a flame, troll, offtopic, or redundant. Its my failed attempt at humor.
Those were the days. I kind of miss the difficulty switch too.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
And over here is our crowning achievement in amusement technology, an electronic version of what you humans call table tennis. Your primitive paddles have been replaced with a....well we did build this Spaceship you know. Anyone from a species who has mastered intergalactic travel raise your hand.
/There are 10 types of people in this world; those who steal sigs and those don't
As the father of video games, he never married
and has no kids.
Chuck E Cheese OWNS!
I loved that place.
Never had pizza with that unique flavor, either.
Not that Nolan Bushnell doesn't deserve a happy birthday, but isn't Ralph Baer the father of video games?
Maybe the father of video games at home.
Ravi
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Didn't chuck-e-cheese used to be called Showbiz pizza?
With a bear instead of a rat?
I like those better.
Oh yeah, and Pitfall was the grandfather of mario!
--Sig starts Now!
| - | - |
Congratulations. You are one of thirteen people over the age of 14 who post here. mad propz.
The inventor of pong was Ralph Baer:
http://www.pong-story.com/rhbaer.htm
I know Mr Baer personally, he is a close family friend from Manchester, NH. This story turned my stomach and I am disgusted that slashdot would EVER post such trash without researching a submission like this..
It's a little duplicitous to bash patent and copyright owners on the one hand and then kiss their ass on the other.
Bushnell has done nothing but stifle innovation through his ownership of patents. He is widely recognized as a tight-fisted licensor, charging outrageous amounts to use "his" work. If you ever wonder why video games cost so much both at home and in the arcade, look at this asshole.
Happy birthday, Bushnell.
I have been pwned because my
So he was involved in video games and pizza. Where the hell is my lawyer to sue his fat ass, in regards to MY fat ass?
from http://www.uwink.com/docs/nolan.shtml
a passion for enhancing and improving the educational process
I think Bushnell, as one of the founders of the video game industry, may be one of the people most responsible for degrading the quality students.
not sure wich is cooler, google or wikipedia...
Shut the fuck up!
Gotta love Red Foreman
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
The man who brought "Missle Command" to my bedroom?
Hell, I'd suck his dick if I could.
Pong was cool, but Bob was definitely Bushnell's best...
I knew better.
This outrageous charge of 25 cents was in fact due to the facist arcade ruler Chairman Bushnell! How dare he drive the price of Pong and Pacman up well over the accepted industry-standard 15 cents (for those younger folk here, many games only cost you a measily 15 centes before the rebel leader Bushnell took power in the now infamous but little known arcade block wars). Once he had monopoly status from the outrageous profits reaped by the masterpiece "Cocnuts" for the Atari 2600, he proceeded to embrace and extend into other markets. For example, did you know that Whack-A-Mole was open source and only cost you 10 cents to play once? (you didn't pay for the game, but rather services rendered by Whack-A-Mole repair men)
We must prevent such atrocities from occuring again, by forcing the Bushnell empire to accept our arcade inspectors.
Really though, I doubt this guy had much to do with the iflated prices of games.
Am I the only one who got the bejeebers scared out of them by that damn anamatronic rat as a toddler/youth? I remember vividly my 5th birthday, I would not be made to come out of the ball pit. that giant fucking rat scared the shit outta me ... and his back up singers, popping up out of the dark like they were fucking gonna stab a poor little dergie *curls up in fetal position*THE HORRORS! THE HORRORS!
To this day I wont go near the damn place, I dont care what arcades they have...
I'm a little tea pot.
If there truly is a God in this universe, I want him/her/it to make sure that Nolan Bushnell spends his 60th birthday fighting crowds of hyperactive kids screaming over the din of 100 videogames just so he can choke down terrible pizza while being serenaded by an animitronic rat or bear or whatever the fuck they've got at Chuck-e-Cheese nowadays.
GMD
watch this
you need to have a heading like that.
Next thing you know some wise guy is going to bring up Higginbotham's oscilloscope hack, mark my words.
Oops.
Great games
Comment removed based on user account deletion
here or here or here
I wrote Go for The Sierra Network, back in the early nineties, and Nolan was a regular player ("atari" is a term from Go).
He liked my version, and came by my desk on a tour of our company to talk to me. But it was 8am and of course I was nowhere near work!
Therefore, I am famous! Or not, yes, upon consideration possibly "not".
Until one bought the other or they merged or whetever.
I'm only 26 years old and too young to remember Atari.
Surely, I've seen an Atari before and played a game on one once for a few minutes, but that was it.
...I bet he's not as good as he used to be at the ol' vids.
:-)
Kinda reminds me of that commercial for batteries on TV where the grandfather is playing some fighting video game against his grandson and keeps losing until the grandson's battery dies, giving the old man a chance to win.
Oh Nolan, what hast thou wrought? Happy birthday, buddy.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
... Any linux drivers for this baby?
;)
I'd like it for pong, arkanoid, little brickout
Was SPACEWAR (this version is via PDP-1 assembler running on a java PDP-1 emulator) written in 1962 by a group calling themselves something like "The Hingham Institute for Space Warfare" the lead programmer was Stephen "Slug" Russell. The program was developed on a PDP-1 computer (the first "minicomputer" which cost 1/10th of other computers of the day (only $100,000)) donated by Digital Equipment Corp. to the students of MIT. More of the history. Steve got to testify on his prior art when Magnavox sued Atari on some related patents.
Recursion: To curse repeatedly.
Ok, well, I'll get right on building a new generation of videogames, making an innovative pizza chain, and a theatre chain as well, and then will I have a shot at it? (When I'm 60?)
The inventor of the video game is Steve Russell,
8 .htma r-Arti cle.html
et. al., who wrote the first video game, "Spacewar" on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962.
See: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa09019
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/PDP-1-SpaceW
- Jim
What's the sound of hitting a chronoligical milestone?
Bloop!
Now I wasn't really supposed to be in the bar at my age, but my dad would go for an evening cocktail and I would tag along and ask the bartender nicely if I could just hang out by the Pong machine. He usually relented and that was it. I had my own video game before anyone knew what they were!
What great fun that little game was to me! I got really good at it (as kids always do) and would take great delight at setting the paddles just right so the ball would bounce back and forth endlessly. Then I would stand back and admire the way I found just the right touch to beat the alogrithm. It was also fun to see the reaction of adults when they noticed that the game with no one in front of it was in an endless loop on its own. Then I would go back, nudge a paddle, and off we went.
Thank you Nolan Bushnell. You made my summer memorable for more than just the beach and the sun. You opened my eyes to the power of electronics. A career as a programmer later followed.
---------
not to be a slashdotter or anything, but nolan is certainly not the father of video games, but he certainly is a huge player in the consumerization thereof. space wars and pong come to mind.
The TRUE father of video games is Ralph Baer: http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/odyssey/index. shtml
Sometimes the lightning strikes, and the struck spend the rest of their lives trying to duplicate the event.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The g4 channel on my time warner digital cable has been running a lot of interviews with many old game developers. Short bios in commercial breaks and sometime ful blown shows.
I remember I saw my first Pong machine back in 1977 (I was 8). We were living in a hotel in Germany at Uncle Sam's expense, awaiting some base housing to be freed up. No way was my dad going to ante up quarters for us to play that silly thing. Fortunately, we had other resources ...
This particular Pong machine had a quirk - if you gave it a mild electrical shock to the changer it would give you a credit to play. A static charge did the job nicely.
So there we were - me and my little brother and other kids zipping up and down the carpeted halls of the hotel in our socks, zapping the Pong machine and playing for hours, with one of us always on the lookout to make sure no one from the hotel saw what we were doing. Even back then I was a larcenous little fsck, trying to Scam The System and get stuff for free.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
I thought Shigeru Miyamoto was the father of video games!
... to the tune of the classic new wave hit "Turning Japanese" by the Vapors. "Turning Japanese" was, at the time, some sort of British slang for wanking.
On the rare occasion (twice in 5 years) we've allowed our little ones to drag us to the Kingdom of the Rat, we've left fantasizing about hacking the animatronics to have Chuck E act out the original intent of the song while he sings...
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
and I turn 18...
Okay, damnit. I just don't get it. Please, tell me what is so great about Nolan Bushnell? Let's see. He drove Atari into the ground. He drove the Commodore CDTV into the ground. He drove Chuck E. Cheese into the ground. He founded a robotics company called Androbot and a technology Incubator called Catalyst. Heard of them? No?? Oh yeah, they're history.
Read the metroactivearticle -- it's the most fair. By his own admission, he didn't invent videogames, he commercialized them.
At best, Nolan Bushnell is a one hit wonder who stumbled upon an industry that would have flourished with or without him. Trip Hawkins founded EA, let's celebrate his birthday instead.
And you have reasonable odds of getting your very own /. article about it one day.
I know not of his endevours with patents/licenses, but I was quite impressed with his Manifesto on Atari's corporate identity.
The points about fairness, customers, and particularly on innovation are something I wish every modern CEO or company official would take to heart, but anymore there doesn't seem to be enough genuine spirit and ideals in american corps.
I really don't mean this to be sarcastic at all, but if he's turning 60 next week, why am I reading this story today?
I mean it seems logical to me that we talk about him turning 60 when he turns 60. I just don't know why this story made it in today when it wasn't a slow news day at all.
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
Didn't chuck-e-cheese used to be called Showbiz pizza?
Nope. Chuck E Cheese was the original concept - which was to bring a Disney-like experience to going out to pizza. Sounds cheesy (pun intended), but that was the idea.
Also, unless you went to the original bay area (Calif) Chuck E Cheese restaurants in the early 80s, you probably never saw it the way it was meant to be.
My father was an Atari engineer who worked on the animatronics (as well as pinball machines, video games, computers, etc). It was pretty neat stuff. In fact, Disney seemed pretty open about showing off their technology - I got to go along for a behind-the-scenes tours at DisneyWorld/Epcot in 81.
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Hmmm I'm guessing one out of every 365 slashdot readers was ALSO born on that day. Coincidence? Perhaps not...
Not only did you fuck up a well-used quote that's been posted here many times before, you were so insecure that people wouldn't get that sly sense of humor of yours that you felt the need to explain the joke, too.
As a pennance, please do not post here again. Ever.
While at Wall E. Weasel in episode Radio Bart...
.. or girl."
Sung by Wall E. the animatronic robot himself:
"You're the birthday, you're the birthday, you're the birthday boy
Episode
So maybe we should call him the "Bill Gates" of Video Games instead of the "Father" of Video Games?
Sleep is for the Weak
>this is the person that is to blame for my wasted childhood
Pong wasn't that good, and it wasn't the first game - just the first in an arcade scenario. Space-war was years earlier, and Nolan just built the damn thing. He didn't have the genius or insight of a true pioneer like da Vinci, Einstein or Ford. People should stop putting him on such a high pedestal.
The one and only time I have been in a Chuck E Cheese was for a birthday party for my daughter's friend. All of the dads sat around drinking beer and trying to ignore the atmosphere. I would go so far as to suspect that beer is a critical facet of the Chuck E Cheese business model, because it gets people in the door who otherwise could not stomach the place. Conversely, the more intolerable the place is for sober adults, the more the dads will drink, thereby increasing revenues.
As part of a class on entrepreneurship in "high technology" I heard Bushnell speak and even had the opportunity to have lunch with him (along with 8 or other students who picked him over the other options which included the likes of Scott McNealy).
I don't remember anything he said during lunch, but I do remember that he was 30 minutes late and stayed and hour past the scheduled end time.
From the lecture, I remember two things. One was he wanted to build a high-speed underground traind from New York to Los Angeles... okay three, things, I just rememberd that he also wanted to build Minority-Report-sytle freeways that take control of your car because "we don't mind our own dirt, but we don't like other people's dirt" and the other (third) thing was the simple quote "ideas are shit" in reference to secret business plans and stealth mode when creating a startup. His point was that everything is in the execution.
Bill Gates made money.
(in http://www.pong-story.com/inventor.htm)
:P
The fact that Willy Higinbotham's physics program (as Baer puts it) could actually be played by two people at once, using 2 paddles to bounce a dot towards the other.
The name? "Tennis for Two".
Mr Baer also prefers not to call Higinbotham any kind of "Father" (his quote marks) by this bizarre logic:
all games are Video Games
Video Games are called that because of the display
Higinbotham used an Oscilloscope screen
Therefore, "Tennis for Two" (or as Baer puts it, physics program) is not a Video Game, and Willy Higinbotham cannot be considered an early creator of Video Games.
Maybe they should put stickers on Plasma/TFT screens like "Does not support Video Game Systems".
It really makes me angry when people use the nicities of the english language and omit important details to present something in a false manner - all to their personal advantage.
Oh yeah, and Higinbotham never filed for a patent either. I think that is saying something.
<B>note to self:</B> <I>post as html</I>
..nuff said.
The guy to get credit mearly wants it for marketting purposes.
The guy to clame credit is bitter for his lack of fame.. and aware of an earlier game.
The guy who deserves credit never sought it out nore cares to receave it just as happy to let somebody else take credit.
In short
The father of video games is like most fathers. Didn't give birth but was there to nuture guide and premote it...
The mother just as happy to see it do well reguardless of who gets credit.
I don't actually exist.
hello
this is my first post here.and have lurked in the background for a while. and wonder why first postings on topics are never relevent informative
or interesting. and i,m not meaning to flame the first poster. is this an unwriten forum rule i did not see it if this is so.
i first came to slashdot some time back when clicking a link in anther forum. saw the first post and left as it seamed that there sould be nothing of interst here.
i supose you should not jugde a topic by its first posting. as i have since come back and found some veary learned and inform answers and posts here and have learned many interesting things i would other wise never have thouht to persue.
i hope other newbys get past the first posts and read on.
have a nice day
And it was an amazing contrast to Chuck E. Cheese, which is pure evil, in the Disneyland-plus-bad-pizza variety.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks