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Father of Video Games turning 60

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the looking-to-the-past dept.

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!"

28 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. I'd claim FIRST POST... by NanoGator · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... but Al Gore would claim he's the father of that.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
    1. Re:I'd claim FIRST POST... by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "... but Al Gore would claim he's the father of that."

      I'm a little surprised he was modded as off-topic. I think he was making a humorous allusion to Steve Russell, the guy who created Space War in the 1960's. This site has the info.

      He should have gotten modded up, not down. Oh well, I guess not everybody is versed in Video Game History.

  2. Aha! by The+Bungi · · Score: 4, Funny
    So this is the person that is to blame for my wasted childhood - days on end sitting in front of the TV, emanciated and dehydrated, trying to wrap the Asteroids score around...

    Damn you Nolan!

  3. Nolan Fathered Steve P Jobs! by linuxislandsucks · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. Because of him by The+Analog+Kid · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Because of him by sirsampson · · Score: 3, Funny

      not to mention sudden video game death syndrome...

  5. Ah, the Atari... by Sheetrock · · Score: 5, Funny
    I've got many fond memories of that thing. Such as the game where you move a ship around the bottom of the screen while shooting pixels at moving bugs. Or the game where you move a firefighter around the bottom of the screen while shooting water at moving fires. Then there's the one where you're at a shooting gallery, moving your gun around the bottom of the screen while shooting at moving targets.

    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.




  6. Kang and Kodos by Dexheimer · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  7. Of course... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As the father of video games, he never married
    and has no kids.

  8. CHUCK E CHEESE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Chuck E Cheese OWNS!

    I loved that place.

    Never had pizza with that unique flavor, either.

    1. Re:CHUCK E CHEESE by Wargamer · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yah, they also serve Beer so Dad doesn't get bored!

  9. Father of Video Games by rpillala · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
    1. Re:Father of Video Games by Ryokurin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Willy Higinbotham was the creator of the video game. he did it on a oscilloscope and a analog computer in the 50s.

      http://www.pong-story.com/inventor.htm

    2. Re:Father of Video Games by Forgotten · · Score: 4, Informative

      Space War had a high-resolution dot display (not raster pixels, not vectors - dots). You can play it if you download a copy of MESS. It wasn't a prototype or experiment - it was a very popular game, with a tournament league and ongoing development.

      Space War wasn't actually the first video game either, though - that's believed to have been a Pong-like game played on an oscilloscope display. The first actual Pong game was Baer's, playable on a TV set with the Odyssey - Bushnell just commissioned an arcade version (from you know who). I'm not particularly sure if Bushnell is the "father" of anything (what's people's obsession with identifying one originator, anyway? Plain old hero worship?), but he obviously did a lot to popularise coinop video games. Mixed blessing though that is. ;)

    3. Re:Father of Video Games by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nolan Bushnell is a big self-promoter. In public, he presents himself as the father of video games. However, at an informal meeting after one conference, he actually introduced Ralph Baer to a group of friends as "the father of video games." Baer responded "I wish you would have said that in public."

  10. This is entirely false by mwarps · · Score: 5, Informative

    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..

    1. Re:This is entirely false by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You obviously don't know the Slashdot motto - "we don't research stories - you do."

    2. Re:This is entirely false by vistic · · Score: 5, Funny

      A four digit user number and you can honestly say that you're surprised by this? HA!

    3. Re:This is entirely false by JoeWalsh · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, William Higinbotham invented the videogame while working for Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York in the 1950s. The game he invented was called "Tennis for Two" and was placed on an oscilliscope.

      Interestingly, he was brought into the court battle to testify back when Magnavox (Baer's employer) and the rest were fighting over who owned the patent on the videogame. The court found that Mr. Higinbotham invented the videogame, and that since he was an employee of the U.S. Government at the time and did it as part of his job (it was part of the annual "Visitor's Day" exhibit at the Laboratory), the idea of the videogame couldn't be patented and was owned by the public.

      -Joe

    4. Re:This is entirely false by lars · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, I *easily* trump your 1158, which of course makes me completely superior to you in every way, and very, very l33t.

      But anyway, I don't see why the Group of Super Midgets that generated this page for me couldn't be trained to eliminate dupes. If they can't even do that, then quite frankly I don't think they're so super. They're just ordinary midgets. Just like all the other high-tech sweat shop child laborers in India.

  11. We're congratulating this guy? by ObviousGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 /. password was too easy to guess.
  12. Passion for Education? by use_compress · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  13. NO CHUCK E CHEESE! by Derg · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  14. Bushnell's Birthday at Chuck-e-Cheese by GuyMannDude · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  15. 1st interactive game on a digital computer by jhoug · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  16. Bushnell: father of the video games *industry* by jg · · Score: 4, Informative

    The inventor of the video game is Steve Russell,
    et. al., who wrote the first video game, "Spacewar" on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962.

    See: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa090198 .htm
    http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/PDP-1-SpaceWa r-Arti cle.html

    - Jim

  17. Childhood memories of Pong by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 5, Interesting
    When I was a kid on vacation back in the early 70s, there was a beach bar that had various games installed. Pinball, mechanical bowling type games, and the like. But they also had this funny electronic game with paddles -- Pong.

    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.

    ---------

  18. Ah ... Coin-Op Pong by bryanp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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