January 20, 2026 • 42 mins
Nowadays most people either play video games, or know someone who does -- yet this wasn't always the case. As civilization skyrockets toward gaming experiences that feel increasingly immersive (and, in some cases, inseperable from reality), Ben, Noel and Max pay homage to the crew that started it all: a scrappy, legendary outfit called "Atari".
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max Magnavox, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Boop Max, the expeditioner, Williams thirty three.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I believe under his belt.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I think he's the thirty third one. That's true.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That is mister Noel Brown. They called me Ben Bullen,
and we are unrepentant, unapologetic fans of video games, so
much so that you can hear our obsession come through
in casual conversation on air. You can also see video
game episodes that we have done on various shows in
(01:09):
the past, like Stuff of Genius, What was the first
video game And of course the legendary podcast project by
the Williams Brothers Ephemeral.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh my gosh, what a classic, already a classic, a
gem of the podcast world.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I have been deep in video game nerd dem over
the past week because a friend of the show, friend
of mine, one of my oldest friends and friend of yours,
Ben Peyton, was visiting from New York and he is
a fellow video game nerd, and he helped me buff
the heck out of two characters in two different games
of mine that I had spect way way way wonkily.
(01:45):
One was Monster Hunter Wild's, which I really love, and
the other was Elden Ring, where I never finished the
dang game. I got stuck and it was apparently because
I was doing a faith based build. Then I had
intelligence way maxed out and it didn't make any sense
of the weapons I had. Some of that stuff is
even too nerdy for me, but not for dear Peyton,
and he helped me. And now I'm rocking it in
(02:07):
Volcano manner Baby.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Nice, nice, congratulations man. I think I've mentioned this on
maybe off air, but maybe on air for stuff they
don't want you to know. I will play just comfort
food video games when I'm doing QA, stuff that I
can play on mute. And I have been putting off
finishing one, a wonderful little game called Ghost of Yo Tie,
(02:31):
a little game.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
You said I heard it was massive. How I described that.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well, I kept putting it off, you guys. And there is,
without spoiling it, there is. It's very cinematic storytelling kind
of open world stuff. And there is this happens in
so many of these kinds of games where you get
to a point in the game where it tells you
are you sure you want to continue because you can't
(02:58):
go back until this mission is completed and ever since then,
I would look at our queue of qa's that I'm
saying q because that's one of Max's weird words. Uh.
I would look at our queue of qa's to conduct
to make sure we have our bleeps and bloops in
the right place, and I would go, let me just
keep doing side missions.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I do it all the time, guys, Like I'm doing
that right now in Borderlands. I'm about to get to
the Timekeepers layer, but rather than going there, I'm just
doing all the little you know, homework assignments from the
mission posts where you basically go grab a gem and
then running around and dodge you know, rippers and robots
(03:42):
and stuff. But I think I'm I think I'm about
ready to rip off the band aid and the scent.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It can be.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
It can be bittersweet.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Man.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
My guy in Yo Tai has killed every possible person
with a bounty, as as all the little fox charms
and got really the sumi e. Anyway, we are saying
that to prove our, if not our bona fides, to
prove our enthusiasm for all things video game.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Went also to show how far things have come.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Oh yeah, I mean these games are wild, man, They're huge.
The graphics have gotten to the point where it looks
like a movie sometimes, especially in the cutscenes, and just
the depth and attention to detail is staggering.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Truly is.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And I think it's evidence too by some of the
excellent video game screen adaptations that we're seeing things like
Fallout and The Last of Us. Like, games truly have
become a cinematic art form, I think more and so
now than ever, But they sure had some humble beginnings.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Speaking of bleeps and bloops.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, I consider video games a proper and legitimate form
of literature at this point, you know. And we owe
this all to the to the humble beginnings, to the
legendary games and creators of consoles who came before. So
(05:07):
this is going to be our two part series on
a little thing called Atari. I don't know if you
guys have ever been lucky enough to have the experience
of of like seeing an actual Magnavaux Odyssey or playing
(05:29):
an Atari.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
It was weird.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It was such a nostalgia rush.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
There's a really cool toy museum that I think we
went two together ben in Austin, Texas, and they have
a lot of the Mega drives and all these old
school machines you know, on display, you know, the museum style.
But then they also have a little corner in the
back where you can play weird old PC games. They've
got like an old you know, spect out old PC
(05:54):
back there and some of these systems. So that's really
the only experience I've had with it. I was a
Nintendo baby. That was what was out the Christmas, the
first Christmas I remember a video game existing.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
I remember playing Super Mario one with my dad, and
we both didn't know that fireballs were unlimited once you
got the flower. We thought you might like run out
after three or ten, which made us play the game
on an entirely different level of difficulty.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
You're playing like a Dark Souls game.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yes, I distinctly remember when I first played a video game.
I would jerk the controller left and right physically with
my arms because that was just the intuitive thing that
I felt, and I'll never forget that. I must have
been like, you know, six years old, and I was
just that was what my mind wanted my arms.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Today, I still do that need to some people do
when they play.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
For the people who were inexperienced, you'll see land them
a controller and they'll want.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
To do the same thing.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So some people do it when they're driving.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Uh yeah, I've been playing near Tamata. I finally picked
that one up. And when you're in intense fight scenes,
I have noticed that I moved way too much and
it does nothing.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Well, it helps you. You know, who are we to judge.
I'm a big I'm guilty of doing the stand up
and walk around while thing, especially if it's really intense.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
We well, not for nothing that the switch startup screen
warns you to fix the little loop around your wrists
in case you fling the damn thing through a plate
glass window. You know, wait, the switch too, it's got
you know that you can remove the controllers.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That still does sort of a kind of things. And
they do have these little wrist.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Straps, and I guess it's more to cover their butts
use someone does something dumb.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But I always crack up when I see that.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And this is one of our favorite times of the week. Folks,
when we get to hang together and record one of
our favorite shows, Ridiculous History. Our research associate for this
series is none other than Magnavox Williams himself.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Magnific Max.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, so thank you, Max. And what we're seeing here
is a lot of video game journalism and a lot
of video game historians share similar experiences to what we
just described. You know about Nintendo, you know about Sega.
If you were a rich kid, you might have had
a neo geo no offense, and of course PlayStation. But
(08:12):
there's one word term concept that has sort of dominated
the history of video games, and that is none other
than atari.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And I gotta say before digging into this excellent research
brief courtesy of Magnavox Max, I didn't know the origin
of that word. And we're going to get into that
and it's it's pretty clever actually. So let us set
our minds back to nineteen hundred and sixty nine, in
the earliest days of Atari, before it was when it
(08:43):
was just you know, a glimmer in the eye of
two guys, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who met in
nineteen sixty nine when they were working for another really
cool company called Ampex in Redwood City, California, and just
to have an audio nerd moment for a second, Ampas
makes has made tape, magnetic tape and reel to reel machines,
(09:05):
and now there are really cool plug in versions of
Ampex tape machines that sort of emulate the different types
of magnetic tape and the different speeds that the reels
would run at. So Ampex looms large in the world
of pro audio even to this day.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And these guys, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, we're following
up on an obsession that Bushnell had had ever since
his college days as an electrical engineering student in Utah.
This is also coming to us, by the way, courtesy
of great work by Keza MacDonald at IGN dag Spicer
(09:42):
for the Computer History Museum and of course Jamie Lindino
for PC mac all right, so Bushnell, he's fascinated, you
guys with one of the very first video games, something
called Space War.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
That was an MIT thing, right, didn't that like run
in a lab basically a MIT and P would pop
through to play it and it was about the only
way you could get your hands on it.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
It was a huge.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Computer at MIT and that came to us courtesy of
a professor Steve Russell and two of his students. And
this is nineteen sixty two, so very early days. Bushall
would grab one of his frat bros. And instead of
you know, going out and raising caine and drinking cheap beer,
they would sneak into the Computer.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Labs engineering frat bros Duda party, I guess space.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, no, maybe they had beer while they were doing that. Yeah,
we don't know, we don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
They definitely had beer, as we'll get to later to
the story.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh that's right, the Lucy goosey office policies of the
Atari company. Whenever we talk about this era of computing,
and I'm probably a broken record at this point, but
I always have to recommend the excellent AMC show Halt
and Catch Fire, which is about like the earliest days
of you know, Texas Instruments and what led to the
(10:59):
personal computer. Somewhat fictionalized for sure, but it has to
do with the Silicon Prairie, which was where Texas Instruments
was created, and then some folks that start get their
start there end up migrating to Silicon Valley and kind
of making that what it is, but excellent needle Drops,
just a fabulous show about the earliest days of computer nerdery.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And Bushnell was definitely Here's why we want to spend
some time on his college education because Bushnell was definitely
in the right place at the right time. This is
a very new, nascent, emergent industry. Computer graphics, like the
idea of computer graphics are invented at his alma mater
at the University of Utah in the nineteen sixties by
(11:43):
a guy named Ivan Sutherland, a pioneer of computer science.
And if you looked around the world of academia and
Ivory Towers at the time, the University of Utah was
one of the primo spots to learn about computer They
had cutting edge equipment for their era.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
State of the art, which by today's standards would probably
be laughable, and you could probably do the same level
of programming on a smart fridge. Today you hear about
people putting doom on smart fridges and stuff like that.
You know, unlike a frickin' what do you call it,
a tamagotchi. It's just it's incredible how much things have
shrunken down in terms of physical size, and just the
(12:25):
amount of power you can pack into the smallest spaces.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
One hundred percent. Yeah, So the stuff that was state
of the art in the early nineteen sixties, if you
looked at it now, it'd be more like an artistic statement,
but it's it's powerful history. So Space War, one of
the earliest video games, our buddy Bushnell is one of,
is in rarefied air. He's one of the very few
individuals who can play these kind of games on campus computers.
(12:52):
And at the same time, there's something, there's some parallel
experiences that inform his career. For sure.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
We're talking about the arcade, and when we think of
an arcade today, we think of, you know, that little
cove at your local mall, especially growing up that had
like arcade cabinets. The first time I ever saw a
game like Mortal Kombat was at my local mall.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Arcade.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
A game that has four different players, like teenage Routing,
Ninja Turtles X Men had more than four. Those were
those were great ways to bond with your friends. And
I got to tell you the I can't wait till
we all go to Japan with each other because the
arcades there, the arcade culture is very much alive, and
(13:36):
they took what was happening in the United States and
just went hollwild with it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
For sure, we're super lucky here in Atlanta to have
some pretty incredible Japanese inspired arcades, I believe. At Perimeter Mall,
there's a place that does all these gotchapong machines, and
then they have like all the crazy Japanese rhythm games.
And then at another mall, Comelin Mall, there's a place
called Round One that is incredibly heavy on the Japanese
(14:06):
arcade machine fighters and rhythm game stuff that you would
really only typically see at a con or something or
you know, in Japan. To your point, but bush Nell
is doing a little summer job situation, or maybe a
holiday job, make a little extra money at an arcade
at the time, and we're seeing mainly pinball machines. In
(14:27):
the early days of arcades, bing bing bang bang bong
coin operated pinball machines, and the early days of that
are very beautifully portrayed in the film Licorice Pizza from
Paul Thomas Sanderson. So just do check that one out
too if you want to get a glimpse into this
period in time. They were as we said, coin operated
entertainment halls, similar to slot machines or pachinko parlors you
(14:51):
might see over in Japan, games of chance, ways to
win prizes, things like that.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
And so bush Nell looks around at this, and so
as huh, I wonder if I can combine these two
ideas of computer games and arcades places where people would
gather for recreation. And so he essentially he's coming up
with this concept of the classic nineteen eighties arcade. Now
(15:19):
you have game cabinets that take a quarter or what
have you, places where the parents can drop the teens
off all Saturday, you know, and give them a little
pocket money for the food court. This concept of the
halcyon days of arcade halls. It probably would have happened
independently at some point, but the way history shakes out,
(15:43):
it happens because of Bushnell and Atari, and it takes
a while to get there though, because these guys are
him and his associate Ted Dabney. They're making the first
version of this stuff. The guys who say, let's take
some of these cool computer games that have been hidden
(16:06):
in universities, let's monetize them, let's make them operate based
on coin insertion, and let's make a company that sells
this idea. Now, the etymology may be weird, but the
name of the name of the company that they started
working for when they were envisioning this idea, we don't
(16:26):
know the etymology too well, but it is called Nutting Associates.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Ha ha he he hah, not to be confused with
Coming Georgia, which we love to talk about. The game
that they started was called Computer Space. This was their
first time obviously there still heavily influenced by Space War.
(16:54):
So they work on this game called Computer Space that's
released in nineteen seventy one. It didn't exactly set the
world on fire and was viewed as something of a
failure by the brass over at Nutting, but it was
a pretty big swing and it still sold fifteen hundred
units and made Bushnell and Dabney Bushnell rather and Dabney
(17:15):
enough cash to kind of go out on their own
and start their own company focusing on coin operated electronic games.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And it's really cool that they got a slice of
the pie from those sales and that R and D
because that doesn't always happen in tech companies.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
As we know, so out of thievery and tech and
back in these days too, you know, industrial espionage things
like that I've often talked about. It's a different world,
but similar development process electronic instruments, like by Japanese companies
like Roland. They would cover up the proprietary components on
(17:53):
the circuit boards inside of these things with like different
material so that if anyone were to snap a picture
of the circuit board, they couldn't see the layout of
these like chips that would make the sounds that the
role in said JUNO one, O six would make. And
also down the line led to some some flaws because
these coatings would build up moisture underneath, et cetera. But
(18:14):
they were doing it for real reasons, which was just
a real cutthroat kind of space race space war for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
And we also we also see, you know, across various industries,
we see that employees, often very brilliant talented employees might
not get their work recognized, right. They just get their salary,
but they don't get a share of the profits from
their amazing ideas. So good on you Nutting for paying
(18:44):
these guys out a little bit extra. They got enough money,
as we said, to create their own company that they
originally were going to call Sizogy, which is a real word.
It's spelled s yz y g y.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Great word.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It can be a thing referring to alignment between celestial
bodies in opposition, or if you wanted to make a
little more broad, just a pair of connected or corresponding things.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, and it turns out that they would have to
change the name. They founded it in nineteen seventy one,
but then they learned the name was already in use
out there in California, so they changed the name of
their company to Atari Incorporated in nineteen seventy two. And
I think we're all very interested in the etymology here
(19:37):
because that is a Japanese word that is used when
we're talking about the Chinese game Go. Have you guys
ever played Go?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
I haven't. My first exposure to it was.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
In the movie Pi, And I know that it is
beloved by a lot of computer programmer types and you know,
any other enthusiasts of these types of strategy games.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But it does have a I think there's.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Like an unlimited number of moves or it's some kind
of like insane number of combinations of moves and that's
what it's known for. So you can really easily see
how someone that was interested in that board game might
be able to parlay that.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Kind of stuff into a video game.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
It's so it's so hard, man, especially when you're playing
with someone who is very familiar with the game or
invested in it. I always enjoy playing Go, and I
don't think I will ever win against someone who knows
what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I've never even attempted it. It just seems a little
over above my pay grade. But I'm fascinated by the
culture surrounding it is. It is widely known as being
a game for brainy types.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So this is okay. So Chinese game Japanese word or
taru taru a taru literally meaning to hit a target ataru,
And in this context, the name Atari means something kind
of like I'm about to win clever. Yeah, like a check, right,
(21:05):
like a pre a pre winning declaration. Yes, yeah, like
check and chess. And this is I think it's a
really smart name because it is aspirational too. It's telling
you that you by played an Atari game or yourself
about to win.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
It's also good branding because some other options that they
were considering were SENTI sente and Hane, which to me
on paper would not be immediately clear how to pronounce,
whereas Atari is clear, instantly snappy, and it just I
don't know, it has a nice ring to it.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, Hani, I appreciate that point. This occurred to me
as well. Hotta would be off putting to American consumers.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Now pronounce it hain.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Everybody would pronounced like hey because Haynes was a thing.
They would be like video game underwear. So another cool
thing that Atari had going for them was better technology. Dabney,
the co founder we mentioned earlier, he invented the early
tech that allowed dots to move on a screen without
(22:08):
having a room sized computer powering them.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, I think we're talking about early versions of microprocessors
and integrated circuits. I think that's kind of Again, I'm
not an expert, but I'm fascinated by this stuff. So
it was called the spot motion circuit, And to your pointment,
at allowed a dot to move up and down, left
and right on a screen two dimensional space.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
And it was very different from the Megamegamega Lab.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
You know bound computers that powered space war. Yeah, these
were still quite large though. We were talking about the
early days of arcade cabinets.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, these are still big, like refrigerator sized pieces of
furniture that can play a game with you, and like
the later smart fridges.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Isn't it funny?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
How now?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Our buddy Matt Frederick from Stuff That I Want You
to Know has one of these, but they have the
like sort of nostalgia arcade machines that just look big
on the outside, but inside it's probably all in a
raspberry pie or something like that, like a freaking pinky sized,
you know device.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's how my emulator is too. It's a I bought
the not the nostalgia one, but the paired down in
form factor pared down console thing like.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
A desktop size, right.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
It looks tight. It looks like the size of a
small hard drive, I know drive.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, which are cool.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, mascot one that straight up sits on the ground
and looks like it's really really has a lot of
great fighting games, has insane has like every game on it,
like everyone you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
So at this point.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
In nineteen seventy two, bush Now went to a demo
of the first ever home video game console to Max's nickname,
the Magna Vox Odyssey, which was a little very seventies
looking brown.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And based plastic box.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, yeah, this thing, it reminds me of wood grain,
but that's just because of the time, which senties very like.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, it looks like like wood paneling you'd see in
seventies homes and kitchens.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You know, we're gonna sit on the papa sad and play. Magnavox.
Might make it to the waterbed.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yep, yep, curl our toes in the shag carpets.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I love it. Please check out our episode on Stuff
of Genius for more about the Magnavox Odyssey. This thing
did something amazing as an at home console. You were
able to play different games, multiple different games. Now they
were all silence, but you would see things like table
(24:42):
tennis that probably looks familiar to a lot of people.
And the Magnavox was pretty successful. It sold around three
hundred and thirty thousand units across North America and Europe
when it was released.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
For sure, And while it did allow you to play
different games, they were, like you said, silent bend games,
including the delightfully charmingly named table tennis or Tennis for two.
Maybe that's different. I think this one was just called
table tennis. We didn't mention Tennis for two. That comes
into Nope, that was the very very very early game.
Tennis for two is in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Insane.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Anyway, this machine was limited to what it had inside
of it, like these were hard programmed little carture games.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
There were no cartriges yet at this point.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yes, and there had been those games we mentioned previously,
Tennis for two and fifty eight, Space War and sixty two,
and then there have been more commercial games like Computer
Space of course. But the mythical force, the behemoth that
was to change video games forever, is coming on to
(25:45):
the stage.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
It is Paula No, no, no, no. Oh man, what
a banger that is. And again it's so quite looking
back on it.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
You got these little little white bars on either side
of the screen, and then the little dots that were
able to move up, down, left and right, and it
was all just based on you know, what's the word
I'm looking for, the trajectory, you know, like physics, kind
of the most basic of physics, Like the ball would bounce,
you'd move the paddle so it would bounce and then
catch it on the other side.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I love it. There's a live action. That's a weird
way to say it, but there's a live action pulling
machine that's actually quite popular in Japanese arcades.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
It's the only cattles stand by that sounds intense. How
does that work? It's like literally cool. It's like a
ball and paddles.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
It's like it's like tron kind of. It's similar to
air hockey, but there's no hockey. It's all magnet magnetized stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So is it vertical though, or is it like.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
No, it's horizontal. I got you, gott and so you've
got your little your uh, you've got your little line
that functions as your paddle, and there's a square that
looks like a live action pixel and it boops and
bops around and it gets really intense.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
I bet yeah. It also reminds me.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I mean, it's it's it's not the same, but it's
level similarity to fostball.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, especially with the fact
that it can be so weirdly competitive.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Guys, I'm just gonna put out right now, we're about
to do a few episodes on the history of kind
of interesting niche sports, and I put forth that we
should maybe add to that down the line and do
one on.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
The history of foosball for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, and I had early ones were hand carved, and
I would love to hear more about them.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
All right, let's put on the list. I'm also glad
that those real life Pong machines in Japan are located
in arcades not in bars, because just like foosball plus
a couple of beers with the buddies, that stuff could
get intense.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
You know, can ever?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, So Pong was the very first release of this
new company Atari. Yeah, yeah, and it is the first
project of the company.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
There's another guy we need to introduce also of a
former Ampex employee, Al Alcorn, cool name Al Already Ampex
is a big name in audio and video recording. This
gives Alcorn the background he needs, the training he needs
to design the game called Pong, and when he starts,
(28:19):
there are no microprocessors at this time, so he builds
Pong using analog circuitry and very very few people knew
how to design in this new field we're calling digital video.
So the first prototype for Pong is a wooden cube
covered with yes fox wood grain as screen, two knobs,
(28:43):
and then a coinbox because they're not given up on
the coin idea.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Mm hm, whipping got no gas tank, but it's still
got wood grain. It's true.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And this is coming from Dag Spicer over at the
Computer History Museum. So let's get down to the display.
We know what the device looks like, but you know,
there weren't like LCD monitors at this point. What are
we talking here? How would you how would you make
you know, turn those bits into into video.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, it's a good question. Well, it depends on how
much money you're willing to spend at the TV store.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
I guess we're talking about prototype stuff at this point, right, right.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Right, So Al is not shelling out for the top
of the line boob Tube. Instead, they buy a cheap
twelve inch black and white TV set from just a
store up the way, and they use that in place
of a standalone display because the standalone display is kind
of expensive at the time, and this is a prototype, right,
we just want to prove that it works, then we
(29:41):
can worry about making it sexy.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So they have their sort of makeshift headquarters at a
tavern called Andy Caps, which is I believe that was
isn't that guy the guy that has the hot Fries. Yes,
he's a He's also like a you know, A when
he comic strip fell. This is in Sunnyvale, which I
believe is a suburb of San Francisco. Bushnell's got pals there.
(30:10):
They set it up there as sort of a testing ground,
and it gets pretty popular.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, it's like his his cheers, his local. It's where
he goes to unlined after work. So of course he
has friends there and he knows management. And a few
days after they install the machine, they realize that it
is stopped working. This is not uncommon with prototypes. But
(30:34):
when Al comes in to the bar to check out
what's going on, he says, oh, wait, PAUNG hasn't failed.
It's just entirely choked up with quarters.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
They gorged with coins.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
So many people are playing this game that it can't
accept any more quarters, so it's not going to work.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
We got to envy out the coin box.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
This is good data, man, because it really proves to
them that this thing might have some legs and the
ability to be rolled out to a much larger audience.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah. And Bushnell is having one of those watershed moments
because his dreams are being proving correct, right and he says,
this could be much bigger than just a corner at
old Andy Capps. We had already noted that the magne
Vox Odyssey likely inspired Bushnell and co. To create polng
(31:27):
in the first place. And this also was wetting the
appetite of the consumer market because more and more people
were familiar with the idea of at home video games.
And this makes Bushnell think, wait, we can wake way
more money selling directly to somebody's house than we can
(31:49):
just putting a machine in a bar and waiting for
quarters to roll in.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Right, they're already jumping ahead to the next phase, not
just like rolling these things out as arcade machines and
some of those arcades of bush youth.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Let's just put it right in folks living rooms.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Absolutely, and this is a this is a pretty aggressive
demand to lay on our pal al So we're saying, Okay,
you already did a great job making this thing and
getting the form factor smaller than we could have imagined. Kudos,
Tally Ho. I need you to make it even smaller
(32:24):
so we can sell it to kids at home. This
is where Alkhorn creates kind of a video game Avengers
or Justice League, a hit spot a team in Grass Valley,
which is out in California's historic Gold Country, and they say, okay,
we're as a team. We're going to figure out how
to implement a custom integrated circuit that allows us to
(32:48):
hack the economy of scale so we can produce Pong
at a massive level and keep the price competitive, because
you know, it doesn't matter how good it is if
people can't afford to pay for.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It, right, exactly. Those are the ones that you mentioned
that only like the doctor's kids had in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
So why are they in Gold Country. They're doing this
because they want to get away from the hubbub and
distraction of Atari's main production facilities in Silicon Valley, which
are already you know, cranking out arcade machines.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Right, So from this more solitary kind of atmosphere, they
brought in a few new faces, Bob Brown and Harold Lee,
who were some engineers whose task was to fit this
entire game onto a single chip.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
This is a taller.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it's tall milkshake to sip for sure, and they
are able to figure this out. Spoiler right, anybody who
lives in twenty twenty six knows this. But there is
an endearing and inspiring startup energy cinematic story to it
because the wiring is done by Al's wife, Katie. It's
(33:56):
like a family affair, which I find so endearing.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And this is why keep bringing up Halt and Catch
Fire because it really shows this kind of early punk
rock spirit of like the earliest computer makers and you know,
folks doing things in their garage. And I can't recommend
that show enough because every time I hear about someone's
wife doing a thing like in the bedroom or whatever,
the using the space and the materials they had, that's
what my mind jumps to. So this product was able
(34:22):
to be built, and it was an instant success when
the massive retailer Sears decided to take.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
It on as an item that they would.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Have for So check out our Seiers episode by the way, folks, Yeah,
instant houses, well not instant, but you know catalog.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Houses, mail order houses.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yet you know william s Burrow's house he passed away
a while ago, but his state manager, whose name is
escaping me, just passed away last week. And this house
that this guy maintained william S Burrow's final residence was
in fact a Sears catalog house.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Oh, nice, nice, I believe my parents first house was
a Sears catalog.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Did they I'll have it.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
No, they sold it in the nineties, nineteen nineties, just
to verify it.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Now we know that this can be the deciding factor
for any startup company's success when a larger company offers
you visibility, promotion, and distribution. So Sears, you know they're
a big dog. They're not ordering Atari products one at
a time. They order two hundred thousand units as their
(35:28):
very first individual order. This is a huge challenge for
this up and comer Atari because now they have to
make two hundred thousand units in time for the nineteen
seventy five Christmas season. So they rush to find extra
assembly buildings. They're hiring staff left and right. They do
(35:49):
get it over the finish line. They make this Sears
Pong game. It's rebranded as Telgames. Get it like television games,
and it becomes you know, it's like the Elmo back
in the day. It's the Muscow Christmas gift t.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
HI jingle all the way. Indeed, Yeah, good problem to have,
but certainly required some what they call in the games
industry today crunch. But things aren't all, you know, sunshine
and daffodils. For the Atari company, they run into pretty
quickly some legal hurdles.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, this is not all trumpets and angel farts for
these guys. It's nineteen seventy four and the creator of
the Magnavox Odyssey, Ralph Behar says to his employers. He says, Look,
these guys are ripping us off with this Atari malarkey,
Atari malarkey. We've got to sue them. And this Bushnell
(36:44):
guy has copied the idea for Paul from entirely from
that demo of table tennis that he saw in nineteen
seventy two. We can prove it because he signed the
guest book.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Not entirely untrue. But then the question becomes about like
where is the novelty?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Like, just because you made a game that mimics a
sport that already exists, that means no one else can
ever do that again. And then it becomes sort of
a matter for the courts to the side.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Just because someone else made a hat, does that mean
no one else could have a hat? Just because somebody
else played a song on a guitar, does that mean
guitar music is banned for everybody else.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Well, and oftentimes exactly ben And oftentimes, in these types
of cases, rather than roll the dice with a trial,
settlement is recommended as the best option. And that's what happens.
Bushnell and Ntari, you know, armed with some successful sales
and probably a pretty decent legal team, settled out of
court for around four hundred grand, between four hundred grand
(37:48):
reportedly and a million bucks.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
That's right, folks. In the US justice system, at least,
settling out of court is incredibly common. And one of
the things that some parties like about settling out of
court is you don't always have to disclose the financial
amount of the settlement or admit wrongdoing or admit wrongdoing.
(38:11):
So we know that Bushnell and Atari eventually settle. We
don't know the exact sum that they settled for, but
it did result in them becoming an official licensee for Magnevox,
and this is good for Atari. It's expensive, but it's
a good way to write the ship because now they
can continue selling games that may be seen as infringing
(38:35):
upon Magnevox's patent, which is pretty broad. And this is
something we still see in the world of tech today,
like what can and cannot be patented like clicking with
a mouse.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Right, or podcasts, you know, publishing, you know, serialized audio
content on a feed.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
We know where that one went.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
But there was a time in the early days where
we were around where there are these patent trolls who
were literally trying to sue certain podcasts over the use
of this concept.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Did jump in here.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
This is actually a big problem with video games, which
a certain very famous video game made by Nintendo and
Game Freak is suing another game called Pow World right
now for pen and breach basically saying you cannot catch
creatures and balls that we own that well, that we
own that mechanic.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Let's see in this this is a weird sticky thing.
Check out our series on IP and trademarks and patents
as well all the related Gobbly gook there and him
Biddy hooplah. Well, we know the Magdavox patent. It seems
really broad today, but it's because they were first to
market in a new field. Their patent at the time
(39:45):
covered any television game that could be controlled by a player.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
That's super broad.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Also, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, check
out our episode on Apple records versus Apple Computers.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
So Magnavox now becomes something like a patent troll themselves.
They are putting in huge amounts of blood, sweat, and
treasure into tracking down and legally prosecuting people that they
think are infringing their patent.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
But Atari seems to have wiggled their way out of
this and they're able to sort of stay the course
and continue forward and developing new things because they're no
longer having to worry about Magnavox going after them because
they're license at this point and Magnevox is too busy
going after everybody else.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, and it turns out, you know, a lot of
historians will say that Atari probably would have won the
case if it went to court, but they're going to
argue this settlement turned out to be a better play
in the long run because now Atari doesn't have to
wage all those legal battles. Magnavox is giving blood dry excellent,
(40:52):
and they're like functioning as a shield for Atari.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yet going after all all the little guys.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
For sure, after all, the chihuah was right. So this is,
as we said, a two part series. We're gonna spend
the week on Atari because we love it and there's
a lot of ridiculous history to it already. We can't
wait for you to join us later in the week
for Atari Part two. In the meantime, thanks for our
(41:21):
super producer and research associate for this episode, mister Max
Magnavox Williams.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams for composing this bang and
bop of a theme that you hear between your ears
this very moment.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Christopher rasiotis an Jeff Kobe here in spirit mm hm.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
And a half hearted threat of legal action to our
good friend Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Litigation is always on the table with that guy.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
You just can't You never know where he's gonna move next.
You know what I mean, he's tricksy.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Nope, you sure don't.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Hey, j Mohammad Jacobs the Puzzler and you know.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
The second one to Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzer.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
I reckon Rachel Big Spinach Lance, that's doctor Rachel Big
Spinach Lance. The rood Dude's a ridiculous crime. If you
dig us, you'll love them. And Noel, this is a
fun one, man. I'm looking forward to Part two.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Ah, same We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max Magnavox, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Boop Max, the expeditioner, Williams thirty three.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I believe under his belt.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I think he's the thirty third one. That's true.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
That is mister Noel Brown. They called me Ben Bullen,
and we are unrepentant, unapologetic fans of video games, so
much so that you can hear our obsession come through
in casual conversation on air. You can also see video
game episodes that we have done on various shows in
(01:09):
the past, like Stuff of Genius, What was the first
video game And of course the legendary podcast project by
the Williams Brothers Ephemeral.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh my gosh, what a classic, already a classic, a
gem of the podcast world.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I have been deep in video game nerd dem over
the past week because a friend of the show, friend
of mine, one of my oldest friends and friend of yours,
Ben Peyton, was visiting from New York and he is
a fellow video game nerd, and he helped me buff
the heck out of two characters in two different games
of mine that I had spect way way way wonkily.
(01:45):
One was Monster Hunter Wild's, which I really love, and
the other was Elden Ring, where I never finished the
dang game. I got stuck and it was apparently because
I was doing a faith based build. Then I had
intelligence way maxed out and it didn't make any sense
of the weapons I had. Some of that stuff is
even too nerdy for me, but not for dear Peyton,
and he helped me. And now I'm rocking it in
(02:07):
Volcano manner Baby.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Nice, nice, congratulations man. I think I've mentioned this on
maybe off air, but maybe on air for stuff they
don't want you to know. I will play just comfort
food video games when I'm doing QA, stuff that I
can play on mute. And I have been putting off
finishing one, a wonderful little game called Ghost of Yo Tie,
(02:31):
a little game.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
You said I heard it was massive. How I described that.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well, I kept putting it off, you guys. And there is,
without spoiling it, there is. It's very cinematic storytelling kind
of open world stuff. And there is this happens in
so many of these kinds of games where you get
to a point in the game where it tells you
are you sure you want to continue because you can't
(02:58):
go back until this mission is completed and ever since then,
I would look at our queue of qa's that I'm
saying q because that's one of Max's weird words. Uh.
I would look at our queue of qa's to conduct
to make sure we have our bleeps and bloops in
the right place, and I would go, let me just
keep doing side missions.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I do it all the time, guys, Like I'm doing
that right now in Borderlands. I'm about to get to
the Timekeepers layer, but rather than going there, I'm just
doing all the little you know, homework assignments from the
mission posts where you basically go grab a gem and
then running around and dodge you know, rippers and robots
(03:42):
and stuff. But I think I'm I think I'm about
ready to rip off the band aid and the scent.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It can be.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
It can be bittersweet.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Man.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
My guy in Yo Tai has killed every possible person
with a bounty, as as all the little fox charms
and got really the sumi e. Anyway, we are saying
that to prove our, if not our bona fides, to
prove our enthusiasm for all things video game.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Went also to show how far things have come.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Oh yeah, I mean these games are wild, man, They're huge.
The graphics have gotten to the point where it looks
like a movie sometimes, especially in the cutscenes, and just
the depth and attention to detail is staggering.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Truly is.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And I think it's evidence too by some of the
excellent video game screen adaptations that we're seeing things like
Fallout and The Last of Us. Like, games truly have
become a cinematic art form, I think more and so
now than ever, But they sure had some humble beginnings.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Speaking of bleeps and bloops.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, I consider video games a proper and legitimate form
of literature at this point, you know. And we owe
this all to the to the humble beginnings, to the
legendary games and creators of consoles who came before. So
(05:07):
this is going to be our two part series on
a little thing called Atari. I don't know if you
guys have ever been lucky enough to have the experience
of of like seeing an actual Magnavaux Odyssey or playing
(05:29):
an Atari.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
It was weird.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It was such a nostalgia rush.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
There's a really cool toy museum that I think we
went two together ben in Austin, Texas, and they have
a lot of the Mega drives and all these old
school machines you know, on display, you know, the museum style.
But then they also have a little corner in the
back where you can play weird old PC games. They've
got like an old you know, spect out old PC
(05:54):
back there and some of these systems. So that's really
the only experience I've had with it. I was a
Nintendo baby. That was what was out the Christmas, the
first Christmas I remember a video game existing.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
I remember playing Super Mario one with my dad, and
we both didn't know that fireballs were unlimited once you
got the flower. We thought you might like run out
after three or ten, which made us play the game
on an entirely different level of difficulty.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
You're playing like a Dark Souls game.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yes, I distinctly remember when I first played a video game.
I would jerk the controller left and right physically with
my arms because that was just the intuitive thing that
I felt, and I'll never forget that. I must have
been like, you know, six years old, and I was
just that was what my mind wanted my arms.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Today, I still do that need to some people do
when they play.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
For the people who were inexperienced, you'll see land them
a controller and they'll want.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
To do the same thing.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
So some people do it when they're driving.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Uh yeah, I've been playing near Tamata. I finally picked
that one up. And when you're in intense fight scenes,
I have noticed that I moved way too much and
it does nothing.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Well, it helps you. You know, who are we to judge.
I'm a big I'm guilty of doing the stand up
and walk around while thing, especially if it's really intense.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
We well, not for nothing that the switch startup screen
warns you to fix the little loop around your wrists
in case you fling the damn thing through a plate
glass window. You know, wait, the switch too, it's got
you know that you can remove the controllers.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That still does sort of a kind of things. And
they do have these little wrist.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Straps, and I guess it's more to cover their butts
use someone does something dumb.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
But I always crack up when I see that.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And this is one of our favorite times of the week. Folks,
when we get to hang together and record one of
our favorite shows, Ridiculous History. Our research associate for this
series is none other than Magnavox Williams himself.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Magnific Max.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, so thank you, Max. And what we're seeing here
is a lot of video game journalism and a lot
of video game historians share similar experiences to what we
just described. You know about Nintendo, you know about Sega.
If you were a rich kid, you might have had
a neo geo no offense, and of course PlayStation. But
(08:12):
there's one word term concept that has sort of dominated
the history of video games, and that is none other
than atari.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And I gotta say before digging into this excellent research
brief courtesy of Magnavox Max, I didn't know the origin
of that word. And we're going to get into that
and it's it's pretty clever actually. So let us set
our minds back to nineteen hundred and sixty nine, in
the earliest days of Atari, before it was when it
(08:43):
was just you know, a glimmer in the eye of
two guys, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who met in
nineteen sixty nine when they were working for another really
cool company called Ampex in Redwood City, California, and just
to have an audio nerd moment for a second, Ampas
makes has made tape, magnetic tape and reel to reel machines,
(09:05):
and now there are really cool plug in versions of
Ampex tape machines that sort of emulate the different types
of magnetic tape and the different speeds that the reels
would run at. So Ampex looms large in the world
of pro audio even to this day.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And these guys, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, we're following
up on an obsession that Bushnell had had ever since
his college days as an electrical engineering student in Utah.
This is also coming to us, by the way, courtesy
of great work by Keza MacDonald at IGN dag Spicer
(09:42):
for the Computer History Museum and of course Jamie Lindino
for PC mac all right, so Bushnell, he's fascinated, you
guys with one of the very first video games, something
called Space War.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
That was an MIT thing, right, didn't that like run
in a lab basically a MIT and P would pop
through to play it and it was about the only
way you could get your hands on it.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
It was a huge.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Computer at MIT and that came to us courtesy of
a professor Steve Russell and two of his students. And
this is nineteen sixty two, so very early days. Bushall
would grab one of his frat bros. And instead of
you know, going out and raising caine and drinking cheap beer,
they would sneak into the Computer.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Labs engineering frat bros Duda party, I guess space.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, no, maybe they had beer while they were doing that. Yeah,
we don't know, we don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
They definitely had beer, as we'll get to later to
the story.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh that's right, the Lucy goosey office policies of the
Atari company. Whenever we talk about this era of computing,
and I'm probably a broken record at this point, but
I always have to recommend the excellent AMC show Halt
and Catch Fire, which is about like the earliest days
of you know, Texas Instruments and what led to the
(10:59):
personal computer. Somewhat fictionalized for sure, but it has to
do with the Silicon Prairie, which was where Texas Instruments
was created, and then some folks that start get their
start there end up migrating to Silicon Valley and kind
of making that what it is, but excellent needle Drops,
just a fabulous show about the earliest days of computer nerdery.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And Bushnell was definitely Here's why we want to spend
some time on his college education because Bushnell was definitely
in the right place at the right time. This is
a very new, nascent, emergent industry. Computer graphics, like the
idea of computer graphics are invented at his alma mater
at the University of Utah in the nineteen sixties by
(11:43):
a guy named Ivan Sutherland, a pioneer of computer science.
And if you looked around the world of academia and
Ivory Towers at the time, the University of Utah was
one of the primo spots to learn about computer They
had cutting edge equipment for their era.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
State of the art, which by today's standards would probably
be laughable, and you could probably do the same level
of programming on a smart fridge. Today you hear about
people putting doom on smart fridges and stuff like that.
You know, unlike a frickin' what do you call it,
a tamagotchi. It's just it's incredible how much things have
shrunken down in terms of physical size, and just the
(12:25):
amount of power you can pack into the smallest spaces.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
One hundred percent. Yeah, So the stuff that was state
of the art in the early nineteen sixties, if you
looked at it now, it'd be more like an artistic statement,
but it's it's powerful history. So Space War, one of
the earliest video games, our buddy Bushnell is one of,
is in rarefied air. He's one of the very few
individuals who can play these kind of games on campus computers.
(12:52):
And at the same time, there's something, there's some parallel
experiences that inform his career. For sure.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
We're talking about the arcade, and when we think of
an arcade today, we think of, you know, that little
cove at your local mall, especially growing up that had
like arcade cabinets. The first time I ever saw a
game like Mortal Kombat was at my local mall.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Arcade.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
A game that has four different players, like teenage Routing,
Ninja Turtles X Men had more than four. Those were
those were great ways to bond with your friends. And
I got to tell you the I can't wait till
we all go to Japan with each other because the
arcades there, the arcade culture is very much alive, and
(13:36):
they took what was happening in the United States and
just went hollwild with it.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
For sure, we're super lucky here in Atlanta to have
some pretty incredible Japanese inspired arcades, I believe. At Perimeter Mall,
there's a place that does all these gotchapong machines, and
then they have like all the crazy Japanese rhythm games.
And then at another mall, Comelin Mall, there's a place
called Round One that is incredibly heavy on the Japanese
(14:06):
arcade machine fighters and rhythm game stuff that you would
really only typically see at a con or something or
you know, in Japan. To your point, but bush Nell
is doing a little summer job situation, or maybe a
holiday job, make a little extra money at an arcade
at the time, and we're seeing mainly pinball machines. In
(14:27):
the early days of arcades, bing bing bang bang bong
coin operated pinball machines, and the early days of that
are very beautifully portrayed in the film Licorice Pizza from
Paul Thomas Sanderson. So just do check that one out
too if you want to get a glimpse into this
period in time. They were as we said, coin operated
entertainment halls, similar to slot machines or pachinko parlors you
(14:51):
might see over in Japan, games of chance, ways to
win prizes, things like that.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
And so bush Nell looks around at this, and so
as huh, I wonder if I can combine these two
ideas of computer games and arcades places where people would
gather for recreation. And so he essentially he's coming up
with this concept of the classic nineteen eighties arcade. Now
(15:19):
you have game cabinets that take a quarter or what
have you, places where the parents can drop the teens
off all Saturday, you know, and give them a little
pocket money for the food court. This concept of the
halcyon days of arcade halls. It probably would have happened
independently at some point, but the way history shakes out,
(15:43):
it happens because of Bushnell and Atari, and it takes
a while to get there though, because these guys are
him and his associate Ted Dabney. They're making the first
version of this stuff. The guys who say, let's take
some of these cool computer games that have been hidden
(16:06):
in universities, let's monetize them, let's make them operate based
on coin insertion, and let's make a company that sells
this idea. Now, the etymology may be weird, but the
name of the name of the company that they started
working for when they were envisioning this idea, we don't
(16:26):
know the etymology too well, but it is called Nutting Associates.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Ha ha he he hah, not to be confused with
Coming Georgia, which we love to talk about. The game
that they started was called Computer Space. This was their
first time obviously there still heavily influenced by Space War.
(16:54):
So they work on this game called Computer Space that's
released in nineteen seventy one. It didn't exactly set the
world on fire and was viewed as something of a
failure by the brass over at Nutting, but it was
a pretty big swing and it still sold fifteen hundred
units and made Bushnell and Dabney Bushnell rather and Dabney
(17:15):
enough cash to kind of go out on their own
and start their own company focusing on coin operated electronic games.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And it's really cool that they got a slice of
the pie from those sales and that R and D
because that doesn't always happen in tech companies.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
As we know, so out of thievery and tech and
back in these days too, you know, industrial espionage things
like that I've often talked about. It's a different world,
but similar development process electronic instruments, like by Japanese companies
like Roland. They would cover up the proprietary components on
(17:53):
the circuit boards inside of these things with like different
material so that if anyone were to snap a picture
of the circuit board, they couldn't see the layout of
these like chips that would make the sounds that the
role in said JUNO one, O six would make. And
also down the line led to some some flaws because
these coatings would build up moisture underneath, et cetera. But
(18:14):
they were doing it for real reasons, which was just
a real cutthroat kind of space race space war for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
And we also we also see, you know, across various industries,
we see that employees, often very brilliant talented employees might
not get their work recognized, right. They just get their salary,
but they don't get a share of the profits from
their amazing ideas. So good on you Nutting for paying
(18:44):
these guys out a little bit extra. They got enough money,
as we said, to create their own company that they
originally were going to call Sizogy, which is a real word.
It's spelled s yz y g y.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Great word.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
It can be a thing referring to alignment between celestial
bodies in opposition, or if you wanted to make a
little more broad, just a pair of connected or corresponding things.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, and it turns out that they would have to
change the name. They founded it in nineteen seventy one,
but then they learned the name was already in use
out there in California, so they changed the name of
their company to Atari Incorporated in nineteen seventy two. And
I think we're all very interested in the etymology here
(19:37):
because that is a Japanese word that is used when
we're talking about the Chinese game Go. Have you guys
ever played Go?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
I haven't. My first exposure to it was.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
In the movie Pi, And I know that it is
beloved by a lot of computer programmer types and you know,
any other enthusiasts of these types of strategy games.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
But it does have a I think there's.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Like an unlimited number of moves or it's some kind
of like insane number of combinations of moves and that's
what it's known for. So you can really easily see
how someone that was interested in that board game might
be able to parlay that.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Kind of stuff into a video game.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
It's so it's so hard, man, especially when you're playing
with someone who is very familiar with the game or
invested in it. I always enjoy playing Go, and I
don't think I will ever win against someone who knows
what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I've never even attempted it. It just seems a little
over above my pay grade. But I'm fascinated by the
culture surrounding it is. It is widely known as being
a game for brainy types.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So this is okay. So Chinese game Japanese word or
taru taru a taru literally meaning to hit a target ataru,
And in this context, the name Atari means something kind
of like I'm about to win clever. Yeah, like a check, right,
(21:05):
like a pre a pre winning declaration. Yes, yeah, like
check and chess. And this is I think it's a
really smart name because it is aspirational too. It's telling
you that you by played an Atari game or yourself
about to win.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
It's also good branding because some other options that they
were considering were SENTI sente and Hane, which to me
on paper would not be immediately clear how to pronounce,
whereas Atari is clear, instantly snappy, and it just I
don't know, it has a nice ring to it.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, Hani, I appreciate that point. This occurred to me
as well. Hotta would be off putting to American consumers.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Now pronounce it hain.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Everybody would pronounced like hey because Haynes was a thing.
They would be like video game underwear. So another cool
thing that Atari had going for them was better technology. Dabney,
the co founder we mentioned earlier, he invented the early
tech that allowed dots to move on a screen without
(22:08):
having a room sized computer powering them.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, I think we're talking about early versions of microprocessors
and integrated circuits. I think that's kind of Again, I'm
not an expert, but I'm fascinated by this stuff. So
it was called the spot motion circuit, And to your pointment,
at allowed a dot to move up and down, left
and right on a screen two dimensional space.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
And it was very different from the Megamegamega Lab.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
You know bound computers that powered space war. Yeah, these
were still quite large though. We were talking about the
early days of arcade cabinets.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, these are still big, like refrigerator sized pieces of
furniture that can play a game with you, and like
the later smart fridges.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Isn't it funny?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
How now?
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Our buddy Matt Frederick from Stuff That I Want You
to Know has one of these, but they have the
like sort of nostalgia arcade machines that just look big
on the outside, but inside it's probably all in a
raspberry pie or something like that, like a freaking pinky sized,
you know device.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
That's how my emulator is too. It's a I bought
the not the nostalgia one, but the paired down in
form factor pared down console thing like.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
A desktop size, right.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
It looks tight. It looks like the size of a
small hard drive, I know drive.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, which are cool.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, mascot one that straight up sits on the ground
and looks like it's really really has a lot of
great fighting games, has insane has like every game on it,
like everyone you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
So at this point.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
In nineteen seventy two, bush Now went to a demo
of the first ever home video game console to Max's nickname,
the Magna Vox Odyssey, which was a little very seventies
looking brown.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And based plastic box.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, yeah, this thing, it reminds me of wood grain,
but that's just because of the time, which senties very like.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, it looks like like wood paneling you'd see in
seventies homes and kitchens.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
You know, we're gonna sit on the papa sad and play. Magnavox.
Might make it to the waterbed.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yep, yep, curl our toes in the shag carpets.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I love it. Please check out our episode on Stuff
of Genius for more about the Magnavox Odyssey. This thing
did something amazing as an at home console. You were
able to play different games, multiple different games. Now they
were all silence, but you would see things like table
(24:42):
tennis that probably looks familiar to a lot of people.
And the Magnavox was pretty successful. It sold around three
hundred and thirty thousand units across North America and Europe
when it was released.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
For sure, And while it did allow you to play
different games, they were, like you said, silent bend games,
including the delightfully charmingly named table tennis or Tennis for two.
Maybe that's different. I think this one was just called
table tennis. We didn't mention Tennis for two. That comes
into Nope, that was the very very very early game.
Tennis for two is in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Insane.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Anyway, this machine was limited to what it had inside
of it, like these were hard programmed little carture games.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
There were no cartriges yet at this point.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yes, and there had been those games we mentioned previously,
Tennis for two and fifty eight, Space War and sixty two,
and then there have been more commercial games like Computer
Space of course. But the mythical force, the behemoth that
was to change video games forever, is coming on to
(25:45):
the stage.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
It is Paula No, no, no, no. Oh man, what
a banger that is. And again it's so quite looking
back on it.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
You got these little little white bars on either side
of the screen, and then the little dots that were
able to move up, down, left and right, and it
was all just based on you know, what's the word
I'm looking for, the trajectory, you know, like physics, kind
of the most basic of physics, Like the ball would bounce,
you'd move the paddle so it would bounce and then
catch it on the other side.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I love it. There's a live action. That's a weird
way to say it, but there's a live action pulling
machine that's actually quite popular in Japanese arcades.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
It's the only cattles stand by that sounds intense. How
does that work? It's like literally cool. It's like a
ball and paddles.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
It's like it's like tron kind of. It's similar to
air hockey, but there's no hockey. It's all magnet magnetized stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So is it vertical though, or is it like.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
No, it's horizontal. I got you, gott and so you've
got your little your uh, you've got your little line
that functions as your paddle, and there's a square that
looks like a live action pixel and it boops and
bops around and it gets really intense.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
I bet yeah. It also reminds me.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I mean, it's it's it's not the same, but it's
level similarity to fostball.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, especially with the fact
that it can be so weirdly competitive.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Guys, I'm just gonna put out right now, we're about
to do a few episodes on the history of kind
of interesting niche sports, and I put forth that we
should maybe add to that down the line and do
one on.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
The history of foosball for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, and I had early ones were hand carved, and
I would love to hear more about them.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
All right, let's put on the list. I'm also glad
that those real life Pong machines in Japan are located
in arcades not in bars, because just like foosball plus
a couple of beers with the buddies, that stuff could
get intense.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
You know, can ever?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, So Pong was the very first release of this
new company Atari. Yeah, yeah, and it is the first
project of the company.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
There's another guy we need to introduce also of a
former Ampex employee, Al Alcorn, cool name Al Already Ampex
is a big name in audio and video recording. This
gives Alcorn the background he needs, the training he needs
to design the game called Pong, and when he starts,
(28:19):
there are no microprocessors at this time, so he builds
Pong using analog circuitry and very very few people knew
how to design in this new field we're calling digital video.
So the first prototype for Pong is a wooden cube
covered with yes fox wood grain as screen, two knobs,
(28:43):
and then a coinbox because they're not given up on
the coin idea.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Mm hm, whipping got no gas tank, but it's still
got wood grain. It's true.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And this is coming from Dag Spicer over at the
Computer History Museum. So let's get down to the display.
We know what the device looks like, but you know,
there weren't like LCD monitors at this point. What are
we talking here? How would you how would you make
you know, turn those bits into into video.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, it's a good question. Well, it depends on how
much money you're willing to spend at the TV store.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
I guess we're talking about prototype stuff at this point, right, right.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Right, So Al is not shelling out for the top
of the line boob Tube. Instead, they buy a cheap
twelve inch black and white TV set from just a
store up the way, and they use that in place
of a standalone display because the standalone display is kind
of expensive at the time, and this is a prototype, right,
we just want to prove that it works, then we
(29:41):
can worry about making it sexy.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So they have their sort of makeshift headquarters at a
tavern called Andy Caps, which is I believe that was
isn't that guy the guy that has the hot Fries. Yes,
he's a He's also like a you know, A when
he comic strip fell. This is in Sunnyvale, which I
believe is a suburb of San Francisco. Bushnell's got pals there.
(30:10):
They set it up there as sort of a testing ground,
and it gets pretty popular.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, it's like his his cheers, his local. It's where
he goes to unlined after work. So of course he
has friends there and he knows management. And a few
days after they install the machine, they realize that it
is stopped working. This is not uncommon with prototypes. But
(30:34):
when Al comes in to the bar to check out
what's going on, he says, oh, wait, PAUNG hasn't failed.
It's just entirely choked up with quarters.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
They gorged with coins.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
So many people are playing this game that it can't
accept any more quarters, so it's not going to work.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
We got to envy out the coin box.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
This is good data, man, because it really proves to
them that this thing might have some legs and the
ability to be rolled out to a much larger audience.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah. And Bushnell is having one of those watershed moments
because his dreams are being proving correct, right and he says,
this could be much bigger than just a corner at
old Andy Capps. We had already noted that the magne
Vox Odyssey likely inspired Bushnell and co. To create polng
(31:27):
in the first place. And this also was wetting the
appetite of the consumer market because more and more people
were familiar with the idea of at home video games.
And this makes Bushnell think, wait, we can wake way
more money selling directly to somebody's house than we can
(31:49):
just putting a machine in a bar and waiting for
quarters to roll in.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Right, they're already jumping ahead to the next phase, not
just like rolling these things out as arcade machines and
some of those arcades of bush youth.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Let's just put it right in folks living rooms.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Absolutely, and this is a this is a pretty aggressive
demand to lay on our pal al So we're saying, Okay,
you already did a great job making this thing and
getting the form factor smaller than we could have imagined. Kudos,
Tally Ho. I need you to make it even smaller
(32:24):
so we can sell it to kids at home. This
is where Alkhorn creates kind of a video game Avengers
or Justice League, a hit spot a team in Grass Valley,
which is out in California's historic Gold Country, and they say, okay,
we're as a team. We're going to figure out how
to implement a custom integrated circuit that allows us to
(32:48):
hack the economy of scale so we can produce Pong
at a massive level and keep the price competitive, because
you know, it doesn't matter how good it is if
people can't afford to pay for.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It, right, exactly. Those are the ones that you mentioned
that only like the doctor's kids had in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
So why are they in Gold Country. They're doing this
because they want to get away from the hubbub and
distraction of Atari's main production facilities in Silicon Valley, which
are already you know, cranking out arcade machines.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Right, So from this more solitary kind of atmosphere, they
brought in a few new faces, Bob Brown and Harold Lee,
who were some engineers whose task was to fit this
entire game onto a single chip.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
This is a taller.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it's tall milkshake to sip for sure, and they
are able to figure this out. Spoiler right, anybody who
lives in twenty twenty six knows this. But there is
an endearing and inspiring startup energy cinematic story to it
because the wiring is done by Al's wife, Katie. It's
(33:56):
like a family affair, which I find so endearing.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
And this is why keep bringing up Halt and Catch
Fire because it really shows this kind of early punk
rock spirit of like the earliest computer makers and you know,
folks doing things in their garage. And I can't recommend
that show enough because every time I hear about someone's
wife doing a thing like in the bedroom or whatever,
the using the space and the materials they had, that's
what my mind jumps to. So this product was able
(34:22):
to be built, and it was an instant success when
the massive retailer Sears decided to take.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
It on as an item that they would.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Have for So check out our Seiers episode by the way, folks, Yeah,
instant houses, well not instant, but you know catalog.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Houses, mail order houses.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yet you know william s Burrow's house he passed away
a while ago, but his state manager, whose name is
escaping me, just passed away last week. And this house
that this guy maintained william S Burrow's final residence was
in fact a Sears catalog house.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Oh, nice, nice, I believe my parents first house was
a Sears catalog.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
That's cool.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Did they I'll have it.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
No, they sold it in the nineties, nineteen nineties, just
to verify it.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Now we know that this can be the deciding factor
for any startup company's success when a larger company offers
you visibility, promotion, and distribution. So Sears, you know they're
a big dog. They're not ordering Atari products one at
a time. They order two hundred thousand units as their
(35:28):
very first individual order. This is a huge challenge for
this up and comer Atari because now they have to
make two hundred thousand units in time for the nineteen
seventy five Christmas season. So they rush to find extra
assembly buildings. They're hiring staff left and right. They do
(35:49):
get it over the finish line. They make this Sears
Pong game. It's rebranded as Telgames. Get it like television games,
and it becomes you know, it's like the Elmo back
in the day. It's the Muscow Christmas gift t.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
HI jingle all the way. Indeed, Yeah, good problem to have,
but certainly required some what they call in the games
industry today crunch. But things aren't all, you know, sunshine
and daffodils. For the Atari company, they run into pretty
quickly some legal hurdles.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, this is not all trumpets and angel farts for
these guys. It's nineteen seventy four and the creator of
the Magnavox Odyssey, Ralph Behar says to his employers. He says, Look,
these guys are ripping us off with this Atari malarkey,
Atari malarkey. We've got to sue them. And this Bushnell
(36:44):
guy has copied the idea for Paul from entirely from
that demo of table tennis that he saw in nineteen
seventy two. We can prove it because he signed the
guest book.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Not entirely untrue. But then the question becomes about like
where is the novelty?
Speaker 3 (37:03):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (37:04):
Like, just because you made a game that mimics a
sport that already exists, that means no one else can
ever do that again. And then it becomes sort of
a matter for the courts to the side.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Just because someone else made a hat, does that mean
no one else could have a hat? Just because somebody
else played a song on a guitar, does that mean
guitar music is banned for everybody else.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Well, and oftentimes exactly ben And oftentimes, in these types
of cases, rather than roll the dice with a trial,
settlement is recommended as the best option. And that's what happens.
Bushnell and Ntari, you know, armed with some successful sales
and probably a pretty decent legal team, settled out of
court for around four hundred grand, between four hundred grand
(37:48):
reportedly and a million bucks.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
That's right, folks. In the US justice system, at least,
settling out of court is incredibly common. And one of
the things that some parties like about settling out of
court is you don't always have to disclose the financial
amount of the settlement or admit wrongdoing or admit wrongdoing.
(38:11):
So we know that Bushnell and Atari eventually settle. We
don't know the exact sum that they settled for, but
it did result in them becoming an official licensee for Magnevox,
and this is good for Atari. It's expensive, but it's
a good way to write the ship because now they
can continue selling games that may be seen as infringing
(38:35):
upon Magnevox's patent, which is pretty broad. And this is
something we still see in the world of tech today,
like what can and cannot be patented like clicking with
a mouse.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Right, or podcasts, you know, publishing, you know, serialized audio
content on a feed.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
We know where that one went.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
But there was a time in the early days where
we were around where there are these patent trolls who
were literally trying to sue certain podcasts over the use
of this concept.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Did jump in here.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
This is actually a big problem with video games, which
a certain very famous video game made by Nintendo and
Game Freak is suing another game called Pow World right
now for pen and breach basically saying you cannot catch
creatures and balls that we own that well, that we
own that mechanic.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Let's see in this this is a weird sticky thing.
Check out our series on IP and trademarks and patents
as well all the related Gobbly gook there and him
Biddy hooplah. Well, we know the Magdavox patent. It seems
really broad today, but it's because they were first to
market in a new field. Their patent at the time
(39:45):
covered any television game that could be controlled by a player.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
That's super broad.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Also, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, check
out our episode on Apple records versus Apple Computers.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
So Magnavox now becomes something like a patent troll themselves.
They are putting in huge amounts of blood, sweat, and
treasure into tracking down and legally prosecuting people that they
think are infringing their patent.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
But Atari seems to have wiggled their way out of
this and they're able to sort of stay the course
and continue forward and developing new things because they're no
longer having to worry about Magnavox going after them because
they're license at this point and Magnevox is too busy
going after everybody else.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, and it turns out, you know, a lot of
historians will say that Atari probably would have won the
case if it went to court, but they're going to
argue this settlement turned out to be a better play
in the long run because now Atari doesn't have to
wage all those legal battles. Magnavox is giving blood dry excellent,
(40:52):
and they're like functioning as a shield for Atari.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yet going after all all the little guys.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
For sure, after all, the chihuah was right. So this is,
as we said, a two part series. We're gonna spend
the week on Atari because we love it and there's
a lot of ridiculous history to it already. We can't
wait for you to join us later in the week
for Atari Part two. In the meantime, thanks for our
(41:21):
super producer and research associate for this episode, mister Max
Magnavox Williams.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams for composing this bang and
bop of a theme that you hear between your ears
this very moment.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Christopher rasiotis an Jeff Kobe here in spirit mm hm.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
And a half hearted threat of legal action to our
good friend Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Litigation is always on the table with that guy.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
You just can't You never know where he's gonna move next.
You know what I mean, he's tricksy.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Nope, you sure don't.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Hey, j Mohammad Jacobs the Puzzler and you know.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
The second one to Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzer.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
I reckon Rachel Big Spinach Lance, that's doctor Rachel Big
Spinach Lance. The rood Dude's a ridiculous crime. If you
dig us, you'll love them. And Noel, this is a
fun one, man. I'm looking forward to Part two.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Ah, same We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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