The Start of an Era
Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network
Show Name: From Pong To Pixels
Episode Title: The Start of an Era
Episode #2
You are listening to From Pong To Pixels the podcast with your host Andrew.
In this episode of From Pong To Pixels the Podcast we discuss: new video games that came out during this time, different industries starting to build their platform, and what advancements were made during this era.
Segment 1: The Rise of Atari
Hello everyone, my name is Andrew and welcome to another episode of From Pong To Pixels. I’m glad to be back making another episode, and I’m even more glad that you decided to listen. If you remember last episode, we covered the development and building of some of the first games and game consoles to be made. And if you haven’t seen that episode, make sure to go check it out. Lots of good info in there, trust me. But now this episode is where things get really interesting. I’ll be covering different companies and games that came out during the 70’s, which is a lot of big ones. So enough introduction, let’s just get into it. The 70s is where games really started to pick up in popularity, with arcades doing better than ever. One of the most well-known arcade companies, Atari, was founded and created during this time. Atari is a video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by American businessman Nolan Bushnell, and electrical engineer Ted Dabney. Bushnell had a part-time job working at an arcade, slowly learning more and more about EM games. After Bushnell graduated, he became an employee at Ampex, an American electronics company. There is where he met Dabney, and after the two started talking, they found out that they shared a lot of common interests. Bushnell decided to take Dabney to a computer lab at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to see games there. After seeing them, they jointly developed a concept using a standalone computer system with a monitor and attaching a coin slot to it to play games on. To actually create the game, Dabney and Bushnell decided to start a partnership called Syzygy Engineering, both of them putting in $250 of their own funds to support it. Bushnell and Dabney worked with Nutting Associates to manufacture their product. Dabney developed a method of using video circuitry components to mimic the functions of a computer at a much cheaper cost and smaller space. Bushnell and Dabney used this to develop a variation on Spacewar! called Computer Space, where the player had to shoot at two UFOs, thus creating their first game. About 1,500 Computer Space cabinets were made, but they were a difficult product to sell. While Bushnell blamed the associates for its poor marketing, he later realized that Computer Space was too complex of a game as players had to read the instructions on the cabinet before they could play. Bushnell began seeking other partners outside of their previous ones, and approached pinball game manufacturer Bally Manufacturing, who showed interest in funding future efforts in arcade games by Bushnell and Dabney. Bally offered them $4,000 a month for six months to design a new video game and a new pinball machine. With those funds, they hired Al Alcorn, a former co-worker at Ampex, as their first design engineer. In May of 1972, Bushnell had seen a demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, which included a tennis game. According to Alcorn, Bushnell decided to have him produce an arcade version of the Odyssey’s Tennis game, which would later go on to be Pong. Bushnell and Dabney had gone to incorporate the firm, but found that Syzygy (an astronomical term) already existed where they were. Bushnell enjoyed the strategy board game Go, and after considering various terms from the game, they chose to name the company atari, a Japanese term that in the context of the game means a state where a stone or group of stones is in danger of being taken by one’s opponent.
Segment 2: Pong and It’s Rapid Growth
Bushnell and Dabney offered to license Pong to Bally, but the company rejected it due to it requiring two players. Instead, Bushnell and Dabney opted to create a test unit themselves and see how it was received at a local establishment. By August 1972, the first Pong was completed. It consisted of a black and white television from Walgreens, the special game hardware, and a coin mechanism from a laundromat on the side which featured a milk carton inside to catch coins. The test was extremely successful, so the company created twelve more test units, ten of which were distributed across other local bars. They found that the machines were averaging around $400 a week each. After discussing various terms and conditions with a few different companies, they decided to eventually release Pong on their own, and Atari, Inc. transformed into a coin-op design and production company. Atari shipped their first commercial Pong unit in November 1972. Over 2,500 Pong cabinets were made in 1973, and by the end of its production in 1974, Atari had made over 8,000 Pong cabinets. Due to Atari not being able to produce Pong cabinets fast enough, other existing companies decided to create their own versions of Pong. German-American game developer, Ralph H. Baer, who had patented the concepts behind the Magnavox Odyssey through his employer, felt Pong and these other games infringed on his ideas. Magnavox filed suit against Atari and other companies in April 1974 for patent infringement. Under legal counsel’s advice, Bushnell opted to have Atari settle out of court with Magnavox by June of 1976. Atari agreed to pay $1,500,000 in eight installments for a perpetual license for Baer’s patents, share technical information, and grant a license to use the technology found in all current Atari products and any new products announced between June 1, 1976, and June 1, 1977. Atari then decided to expand their company out to different headquarters and eventually made their way to the home video game console industry. They went on to create many more games, but none of which really being too notable.
Segment 3: Nintendo Joined The Game
Now moving to a different well-known game company, Nintendo. Nintendo is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, founded by a Japanese craftsman (Fusajiro Yamauchi). His, and other Japanese names, will be in the show notes for this episode because I don’t want to even try to pronounce them. Nintendo didn’t start out as popular as it is today, they had to build their way up to fame just like every other company. They started out really early as a playing card business, but I’m not gonna go back that far. I’ll be starting in the 70’s because well, that’s the decade this episode is about. So in the beginning of 1970, the company’s stock listing was promoted to the first section of the Osaka Stock Exchange, and the reconstruction and enlargement of its corporate headquarters was completed. This year was the release of Japan’s first electronic toy, the Beam Gun, a light-powered pistol designed by one of Nintendo’s engineers (Masayuki Uemura). In total, more than a million units were sold. The growing demand for Nintendo’s products led its founder to further expand the offices, where he acquired a ton of surrounding land. Meanwhile, new employees continued to develop innovative products for the company. The Laser Clay Shooting System was released in 1973 and managed to surpass bowling in popularity. Nintendo then went on to create their very first video game system, The Color TV-Game. The Color TV-Game was released as a series of five dedicated home video game consoles between 1977 and 1980 in Japan only. The series has the highest sales figures of all the first generation of video game consoles. For the first two consoles, Color TV-Game 6 and Color TV-Game 15, Nintendo acquired a license from Magnavox production of its own Pong clone game consoles. Nintendo then went on to finalize and release these two consoles, both of them doing extremely well. That’s really the most notable thing they’ve done in this decade. As I’m sure you know, they go on to change gaming forever in another couple years or so. I just wanted to mention one more game before I finish this episode, because how could I not mention this one. The game I’m referring to is Space Invaders, which was developed by a Japanese game developer (Tomohiro Nishikado) and released in 1978. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. Space Invaders was the first fixed shooter and set the template for the genre. The goal is to defeat wave after wave of descending aliens with a horizontally moving laser to earn as many points as possible. Game developers including Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of franchises such as Donkey Kong, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda) and Satoshi Tajiri (creator of Pokémon), have cited Space Invaders as their introduction to video games. Miyamoto stated that Space Invaders had revolutionized the video game industry. I’m sure you’ve heard of Space Invaders before, considering it’s still playable in almost, if not every, arcade to this day. I’m pretty sure that covers all of the important games and consoles that were released in the 70’s, and if not, I deeply apologize. But make sure to stay tuned for the next episode, I’ve already done some planning and I know it’ll be a great one, so don’t miss it. Thank you all so much for listening to another episode of From Pong To Pixels, this is your host Andrew, signing off.
Music Credits:
- Magenta Moon (Part II) – Line Noise
- Mr. Pink – Wolf Asylum
- X-2 – nymzaro
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