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umankind has gamed throughout its history. Whether
we look at the dice and primitive board games from
King Tut’s tomb or the graffiti representing game boards
used by waiting patricians in the Roman forum, people
have left artifacts indicating play as part of their legacy.
Is it any wonder that as our technology has
changed, so has our capacity for play?
Remarkably, it is now possible to
play the hottest games of the year
2 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
2000—2000 B.C., that is. They can be found as shareware on
the Internet.
You can download shareware versions of games from
ancient history. Games like the Moorish Quirkat, Mayan Bul,
Chinese Shap Luk Kon Tseung Kwon, and other games from
ancient cultures ranging from those of the Egyptians to the
Vikings. Each game comes with a lot of background and a
guided tutorial, since you probably have never seen these
games in your local toy store.
Prologue: Games People Played
H
Ancient Egyptian Mehen board.The Forbidden Game of
the Snake and a screenshot of the Windows version.
Ancient EgyptianSenet board andWindows versionof Senet.
Top Left: PatolliTop Right: Quirkat
Bottom Left: BulBottom Right: Ur
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 2
1889The Marufuku Company
is established in Japan by
Fusajiro Yamauchi to make
Hanafuda playing cards,
and by 1907 they expand
to Western playing cards. In
1951, the company becomes
the Nintendo Playing Card
Company. Nintendo translates
as “leave luck to heaven.”
—see page 230
1891 In the Netherlands, Gerard
Philips begins to manufacture
incandescent lamps and other
electrical products. Philips
eventually becomes a world-
wide conglomerate that owns
electronics companies, music
labels, and much more, includ-
ing Magnavox, the company
that produces the first home
video game, the Odyssey.
Philips also develops the audio-
cassette and shares the honors
with Sony for the development
of the CD. Later, they also
create the CDI system.
—see page 18
1918The Matsushita Electric
Housewares Manufacturing
Works is established by
Konosuke Matsushita.
Matsushita is the parent
company of Panasonic, who
manufactures the first 3DO
consoles and also has their
own game development
company in the 90s.
—see page 254
1932 Russian immigrant
Maurice Greenberg
starts the Connecticut
Leather Company and creates
leather products for shoes.
Under the guidance of Leonard
and Arnold Greenberg,
Maurice’s sons, the company
expands into plastic swimming
pools, home toys, and eventu-
ally games and game systems
under the name Coleco.
—see pages 32 and 94
1945 Naming their picture frame
business, Harold Matson
and Elliot Handler combine
their names and end up with
Mattel. Using scraps left over
from making the frames, Elliot
begins making dollhouse
furniture. Mattel ultimately
creates a game division and
manufactures the first hand-
held games and, later, the
Intellivision console. Still later,
they find success with their
line of games based on the
Barbie franchise.
—see pages 30 and 70
1947 The Tokyo Telecommunications
Engineering Company is founded
by Akio Morita and Masaru
Ibuka. They rise to prominence
when they license transistor
technology from Bell Labs and
create the world’s first pocket
transistor radio. For world-
wide marketing, they change
their name to Sony, taken
from the Latin word sonus,
which means “sound.”
Ultimately, Sony becomes
a giant in the world of elec-
tronics and introduces their
PlayStation to the U.S. in
1995, establishing themselves
as one of the most important
game companies in the world.
—see page 283
1954 Service Games, created by
Korean War vet David Rosen,
is formed to export coin-
operated amusement games
to Japan. Later, deciding to
create his own games in Japan,
he purchases an old jukebox
and slot-machine company. The
name of the company becomes
Sega, for SErvice GAmes.
Sega produces many coin-
operated arcade games and
eventually becomes Nintendo’s
chief competitor in the home
console business during the
late 80s and early 90s.
—see page 232
The original Connecticut LeatherCompany building.
Sony’s PlayStation
Intellivision
Sega’sfounder,Dave Rosenin 1966
3
OriginsLandmarks of Electronic Game Prehistory
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 3
1871 REDGRAVE PARLOR BAGATELLEThe first game to use a spring-loaded plunger.
1876 REDGRAVE ORIGINAL PARLOR BAGATELLEMontague Redgrave's 1876 model.
1898 REDGRAVE "TWO BELL"PARLOR BAGATELLENote the slot in the spring-loadedshooter housing.
Homageto Pinball
1932 BALLY BALLYHOOThe game that started Bally Corporation.
1933 PACIFIC AMUSEMENTS CO. CONTACTFirst game to use electricity instead of just gravity. First game to have an electrical ringingbell. First game to be designed by HarryWilliams, who later founded Williams Pinball.
full treatment of pinball
games is beyond the
scope of this book. Indeed,
whole books have been written
on that subject alone! We
include this brief retrospective,
however, because for many of
us pinball was the precursor
to our addiction to video and
computer games.
1932 THE PRESIDENTReleased in February 1933. It is nearlyidentical to the Mills official Pin Tablewhich was released in July 1932.
4 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
A
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1947 GOTTLIEB HUMPTY DUMPTYThe first pinball game to use flippers, forever altering the direction of pinball games.
STAR SERIES Early mechanical baseballgame from Williams.
1931 AUTOMATIC INDUSTRIES'BABY WHIFFLEGenerally regarded as the firstproduction "pin game."
1931 GOTTLIEB BAFFLE BALLGottlieb's first pin game. The game thatlaunched the entire pinball industry.
1936 BALLY BUMPERThe first game with scoring electric bumpers.
PH
OTO
GR
AP
HS
ON
TH
ES
E P
AG
ES
CO
UR
TES
Y O
F W
AY
NE N
AM
ER
OW
(W
WW
.PIN
BA
LLH
ISTO
RY
.CO
M).
MEC
HA
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AL
GA
MES
, TH
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RES
IDEN
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LLY
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MP
ER
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UR
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ICH
AR
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AR
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OTO
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5
1932 MILL'S OFFICIALFirst game to be advertised as "pinball." The name has been used ever since.
U.S. MARSHALLU.S. Marshall was produced by Mike Munves Company in the 1950’s. It isvery similar to the ABT Challenger gun game series produced since the1930’s. The game shot small ball bearings at targets (detail to right).
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 5
Advancement to the
Information Age
hile the concept of a computing device may not be as
ancient as that of playing games, one of the earliest
such devices, dating back to at least 300 B.C., was the
counting board, later the abacus. This was a storage device
used to help keep track of numbers. Not true calculating
devices, these are still the earliest known aids to
mathematical calculation.
Much, much later, but still as early as 1645, Blaise Pascal
invented a mechanical adding machine, for which he
received a patent from King Louis XIV. This could hardly
be called a computer, but it was a calculating device and a
very early step on the road to the computers of today.
Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada ByronBack in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the idea
of a computer that could think intrigued a few intellectuals,
but frightened most people who even bothered to consider
the idea. One man who was particularly obsessed with the
concept of computing machines was Charles Babbage, a
British inventor, astronomer, and mathematician. As early
as 1833, Babbage was working on the problem.
Babbage conceived of two mechanical computing devices,
the “Analytical Engine” and the “Difference Engine,” both of
which were
designed to auto-
mate mathematical
calculations.
Babbage was never
able to build either one, but his colleague and patron,
Augusta Ada Byron, wrote and published several papers
describing Babbage’s work. Byron, the future Lady Lovelace,
was the daughter of Lord Byron, and arguably the first
computer programmer. Even though the Analytical Engine
was never built, Byron wrote instruction sets for the solving
of mathematical problems.
Only LogicalIn order for computers to evolve, many key concepts had to
emerge. The idea that logic could be represented by machin-
ery was one such concept. An expert on George Boole’s work
of the mid-1800s, American logician Charles Sanders Peirce
was able to see that simple true/false calculations of
Boolean algebra could be emulated by electrical circuitry,
which could be switched between “on” or “off” states. By
1880, Peirce had devised a “switching circuit” that could be
used to switch states and therefore emulate Boolean condi-
tions of true/false, on/off. Up to this point, any attempts to
make a computing device had relied entirely on mechanical
components. Using electrical switches made possible
smaller, faster, and somewhat quieter machines.
6 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
Early Technology
W
1890 article in Scientific Americanshowing Hollerith’s machine.
Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Byron
Herman Hollerith’s censustabulating machine in 1890.
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Humble BeginningsHermann Hollerith’s 1890 census tabulating machine may
not seem important to you, but if you play
games on a Windows machine, consider
that this humble invention was more or
less a direct ancestor of the original IBM
PC. Hollerith’s company became the
International Business Machines Corporation,
known more simply as IBM.
In the 1930s, IBM funded the development of an
electromechanical computer known as the Mark I. By the
time it was completed in 1944, however, it was already
obsolete. Already, the speed of innovation was outstripping
the speed of development.
General PurposesLike Hollerith’s census tabulation device, early computing
machines were designed to accomplish a specific task.
However, in the 1930s, British mathematician Alan Turing
envisioned a machine whose entire function would be
described by the instructions it was given. Instead of a
machine dedicated to one purpose only, Turing’s machine
would be useful for multiple purposes. Turing’s concepts
bore fruit in the hands of another mathematician, John
Von Neumann, who created the concept of the stored
computer program.
Tubin’While the Mark I was under construction, John Atanasoff
and Clifford Berry were conceiving the first electronic
computer, which used vacuum tubes in place of the mechan-
ical relays used in previous devices. Their ABC, or Atanasoff-
Berry Computer, “was the world’s first electronic digital
computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford
Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated
several major innovations in computing including the use of
binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing,
and separation of memory and computing functions.”*
For many years the patents and glory went to John
Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert, the designers of the ENIAC,
which for years was considered to be the first all-electronic
computer. It wasn’t until 1973 that a court ruled in favor of
Atanasoff as creator of the first electronic computer.
ENIAC was impressive, however, if only for sheer size.
Consisting of 30 separate units, it weighed in at more than
30 tons and contained 19,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays,
and hundreds of thousands of other pieces. Its electrical
consumption was a whopping 200 kilowatts, and it required
a forced-air cooling system.
Despite its monstrous size, ENIAC was a modern,
pre–solid state computer, whose model for computer design
is the basis for modern computers.
*Source: Iowa State University Web site at http://www.cs.iastate.edu
7
IBM’s original logo, c. 1924.
Left: 1946photograph of ENIAC.
Above: Vacuum tubes from the ENIAC era.
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 7
Believe it or not, themonstrosity above is atransistorized calculator.
1947: A Tiny Breakthrough
Based on experiments in quantum physics, researchers
became intrigued by the predicted behavior of certain
crystals when electricity was run through them. These crys-
tals behaved neither as conductors nor insulators, and came
to be known as semiconductors. William Shockley headed
one team of researchers that included Walter Brattain and
John Bardeen. The trio of Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain
ultimately discovered how to run and modulate electricity
through a semiconductor and created the first transistor.
The transistor was perhaps the single most important
development in the history of electronics. Now electronic
devices that once required a forklift to move could be
held in the palm of your hand. They were more reliable
and produced less heat. The electronics revolution truly
began with the development of the transistor. In 1955,
Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor in Palo Alto,
California, which ultimately set the stage for other
semiconductor companies to move into the area. Because
of its flourishing semiconductor industry, the area came
to be called Silicon Valley.
8 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
The first transistor.
Shockley and his team at work.
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A Look at Nearly 30 Years of Integrated CircuitsThe transistor led to the development of the integrated circuit, or IC, which combined several transistors on a wafer-
like board, called a “chip.” ICs became smaller and more complicated over the years. Originally intended for specific
purposes, such as calculators, they evolved into fully programmable, highly miniaturized devices incorporating millions of
transistors and very complex, almost invisible circuitry—the foundation of modern computers.
In the Background2000: Intel Pentium IVClock speed: 400+ MHz42,000,000 transistors
1979: Intel 8088Clock speed: 5 MHz29,000 transistors
1982: Intel 80286Clock speed: 6-12 MHz134,000 transistors
1989: Intel 80486Clock speed: 25-50 MHz1,200,000 transistors
1993: Intel Pentium ProClock speed: 150-200 MHz5,500,000 transistors
1971: Intel 4004Clock speed: 108 kHz 2,300 transistors 1972: Intel 8008
Clock speed: 200 kHz 3,500 transistors
1974: Intel 8080Clock speed: 2 MHz6,000 transistors
1993: Intel PentiumClock speed: 60-133 MHz3,100,000 transistors
1985: Intel 80386Clock speed: 16-33 MHz275,000 transistors
1997: Intel Pentium IIClock speed: 233-300 MHz7,500,000 transistors
1997: Intel Pentium IIIClock speed: 450-600 MHz9,500,000 transistors
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 9
Tennis for Two:
The First Electronic Game?
Willy Higginbotham was a renowned physicist working at
Brookhaven National Laboratories in the 1950s. As a
designer of electronic circuits for the Manhattan Project
during World War II, Higginbotham came to Brookhaven
when it opened in 1947. In 1958, as head of instrumenta-
tion design, he decided to put some pop in the annual
visitor day by creating a little interactive game using an
oscilloscope, an analog computer, and some basic push
buttons. The result was a simple tennis game, more than a
decade before the advent of Pong. Willy Higginbotham’s
“Tennis for Two” is the earliest known electronic game.
Tennis for Two was a big hit, and lines formed to get a
chance to play it. However, Higginbotham had no interest in
marketing the idea. For one thing, he later said that if he
had patented the idea, it would have been assigned to the
U.S. government and he would have made maybe ten dollars
on it. In any case, Tennis for Two remained operational for
two years and was finally dismantled in favor of an exhibit
that showed cosmic rays.
The whole thing would probably have been forgotten
except that teenager David Ahl saw it on a field trip to
Brookhaven. Ahl later founded Creative Computing
Magazine, the pioneer magazine of the electronic age,
and wrote of his experience with Higginbotham’s game.
10 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
This is the setup atBrookhaven withseveral displays,including Tennis for Two (right).
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 10
11
BY WILLY HIGGINBOTHAM
The display showed a two-
dimensional side view of a tennis
court. A horizontal line, below
center, represented the floor of
the court. A shorter vertical line
in the center represented the
net. Before the start of play the
ball was shown at a fixed posi-
tion above one or the other end
of the court. Each player had a
small box, which he held in one
hand. On the box were a knob to
aim at the ball (up, down or
level) and a push button. To
start play, the person with the
ball at his or her end of the
court would select an angle and
push the button, whereupon the
ball would proceed over the net
or hit the net and bounce back.
If it went over the net, the other
player would select an angle and
attempt to return the ball. He
could hit the ball as soon as it
passed the net or after it
bounced, or wait and see if it
landed beyond the end of the
court. There was some wind
resistance, as some energy was
lost in each bounce. The racquet
was not shown and the strike
velocity was pre-set. We had
controls for velocity but judged
that a player would have trouble
operating an additional control.
H O W T O P L A Y
Willy Higginbotham and his schematic diagram for Tennis for Two. At left, Higginbotham’s own description of how Tennis for Two was played.
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 11
Spacewar!
In the summer of 1961, Steve “Slug”
Russell* and some friends were trying
to figure out how to best demonstrate
the new PDP-1 computer that was being
installed at MIT. In a time when most
computers received input and delivered
output in the form of punch cards or paper
tape, the PDP-1 was remarkable in that it had a
monitor display.
In a 1981 article in Creative Computing Magazine, J. M.
Graetz, one of those involved in brainstorming the idea for
Spacewar!, reported that they came up with the following
three precepts:
� It should demonstrate as many of the computer’s resources
as possible, and tax those resources to the limit;
� Within a consistent framework, it should be interesting,
which means every run should be different;
� It should involve the onlooker in a pleasurable and active
way—in short, it should be a game.
Inspired by E. E. “Doc” Smith’s The Lensman and Skylark
novels, Spacewar was the first real computer game, as
opposed to Higginbotham’s Tennis for Two, which used
hard-wired electronic circuitry, not a computer, to achieve its
goals, and a model of great game design that’s still fun to
play today. The game was programmed into the PDP-1 in
1962, and for several years after that it was disseminated to
college campuses across the country, ultimately spawning a
number of rather significant ripples in the fabric of
space/time or, more importantly, in the history of electronic
games. Among the many whose first influence could be
traced back to Spacewar are Nolan Bushnell, founder of
Atari, and Joel Billings, founder of SSI.
In Spacewar, two
B-movie–style rock-
et ships (called
the “Wedge” and
the “Needle”
because one
was shaped
like a fat cigar
and the other
looked like a
long slender tube)
battled in computer-
generated space. Players
would flick toggle switches to make
the ships change direction, and the ships would respond
much like the zero-G Asteroids ships that would animate
coin-op and Atari 2600 screens almost two decades later.
Each ship could fire up to 31 torpedoes that would, in turn,
appear as little dots traveling in the direction of the other
ship. If the dot actually managed to intersect the shape of
the other ship, it “exploded” and the ship disappeared. There
were no particle effects and no stereo sound effects to mark
the explosion. The other ship simply disappeared and was
replaced by a mad scramble of dots to represent the debris
of the destroyed ship.
Even in 1962, the programmers/designers were discover-
ing the trade-offs between realism and playability. Peter
Samson decided that the random-dot star map that Russell
had originally programmed was insufficient. He used a
celestial atlas to program the star map as the actual galaxy
down to fifth magnitude stars, calling it (with typical hacker
humor) “Expensive Planetarium.” Another student added a
gravity option. Another added a hyperspace escape option,
complete with a nifty stress signature to show where the
ship had left the system. The problem with hyperspace was
12 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
A PDP-1 terminal.
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Reputed to be the original PDP-1 of Spacewar fame, now residing at theComputer History Museum at Moffet Field in Mountain View, California.
Steve “Slug” Russell and friends playing the original Spacewar game.
13
Screen from original Spacewar.
“
you never knew where you’d
end up, and if you reappeared
too close to the Sun and couldn’t
escape its gravity, well, you were
toast. Later, “Slug” himself messed
with the reliability of the torpedoes, but this was not well
received by players, who liked their torpedoes to be accurate
and reliable. Russell’s refinements had leaped beyond his
audience’s ability to appreciate them.
Spacewar remains one of the truly great milestones in
electronic game history. It directly influenced several of the
great pioneers who came later. It was created before there
was an industry, on a computer whose $120,000 price tag
made it an unlikely commercial product. And yet, it remains a
true gem of a game, as much fun to play today as it was then.
*”Slug” was Russell’s nickname because, according to coworker Graetz,
“he was never one to ‘do something’ when there was an alternative.”
Galaxy War, a version ofSpacewar, appeared on theStanford University campus inthe early 70s and may be thefirst coin-operated electronicgame, as it may have been ondisplay and open for businesseven before Computer Spaceand Pong.
“In the late 60s or early 70s, while hanging around atthe Stanford University Student Union, I happenedupon a machine that was the closest I had come to science fiction in real life. It was an electronic game,but not a pinball game. It consisted of nothing morethan a TV-like screen and some buttons. It was, in fact,Spacewar, although by that time, the original togglelevers had been replaced by buttons. It also featuredother improvements, including sun/no sun and negative/positive gravity (or none with no sun).
My friend Steven and I played it pretty much undisturbed at the beginning of the summer break.By the end of that summer, though, there were crowdssix deep around the machine, and a satellite monitorhad been mounted high on the wall so people couldwatch the games in progress. I wish I had understoodwhat Nolan Bushnell had known when he saw the samegame at the University of Utah. It represented thebeginning of a new era. (RDM)
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Games on the TV?
Today it seems obvious that television sets were designed for
playing games. Right? Well, in the early days of TV, it wasn’t
obvious—except to one engineer, Ralph Baer. Baer is a con-
summate inventor, and, convinced that games and TVs were
made for each other, he became the “Father of Video Games.”
After a stint in Army Intelligence in World War II, Baer
obtained a degree in television engineering. His goal was to
build television receivers. By 1951, he was working at Loral,
then a small military contractor. He was given the job of
building the “best TV set in the world.” At that early date,
Baer was already thinking about building TV sets with
games built in.
“Somewhere along the line I suggested that we might
include some novel features, like adding some form of TV
game! That got the predictable negative reaction, and that
was the end of that!”
It wasn’t until 15 years later that Baer gave serious
thought to the matter, but in 1966, he was still just about the
only one doing so. Working at the time for another military
contractor, Sanders Associates, Inc., he scribbled some notes
in a bus station in New York, and on Sept. 1, 1966, he wrote
a four-page paper outlining his ideas for a TV game system.
Within five days, he had completed a schemat-
ic of his proposed system.
The first task was to make something appear
on the screen. One of Baer’s early decisions was
to send the signal through the antenna input
(the only one available) and to use channels 3
and 4, which are the channels still used today
for video game consoles attached to the TV.
Baer got Bob Tremblay involved, and
Tremblay built a vacuum tube device that
could place two movable spots on the screen.
Fox and Hounds“With that simple
arrangement, we
played a ‘Chase
Game’ in which we
pretended that one
spot represented a
fox and the other
spot represented a ‘hunter’ or a ‘hound.’ The object of the
game was to have the ‘hound’ chase the ‘fox’ until he
‘caught’ him by touching the ‘fox’ spot with the ‘hound’ spot.
It was primitive, all right, but it was a video game, it was fun,
and we were encouraged to forge ahead.”
ShooterUntil this point, the entire effort was unofficial and had
nothing at all to do with the work he was supposed to be
doing. But Baer figured that he now had something to
show, so he invited Herbert Campman, the company’s
corporate director of research and development, to see
what he and Tremblay had created. The response was
positive, and Baer received his first funding for the
project—$2,000 plus $500 for materials.
Bill Harrison joined the team in January 1967. Baer’s next
innovation involved a toy gun, and Harrison designed some
circuitry that allowed it to shoot the dots on the screen.
“Now we could ‘shoot’ at that spot, and when we ‘hit’ it, the
spot disappeared from the screen. Having the other player
move the spot rapidly and randomly around the screen gave
us a moving target. Gun games were born!”
The gun was a hit with Campman, too, and the team
got more money and time to develop. New ideas and
directions continued to flow, including some initial work
with creating games to be played over cable TV. New
people joined the project, including Bill Rusch, who had
14 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
Below: Ralph Baer surrounded byhis inventions.
The original notes from the bus station where the first idea of videogames was formally documented.
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 14
the idea to turn the video spot into a ball. “We batted
around ideas of how we could implement games such
as Ping-Pong, hockey, football, and other sports games.
I am not sure that we recognized that we had crossed
a watershed, but that’s what it amounted to.”
Brown BoxBy November 11, 1967, the team had produced a working
two-player Ping-Pong game. What followed was a system
for programmable games, culminating in what Baer calls
the “Brown Box.”
What remained
was to find a way to
market the device.
After showing it to
all the major TV
makers, a negotiation started with RCA. However, the RCA
deal fell apart. But Bill Enders left RCA and joined Magnavox.
At Magnavox, Enders championed Baer’s game product, and
ultimately the deal was struck.
The first home video game system,
the Magnavox Odyssey, was launched in
1972. The Odyssey’s legacy was far-
reaching. Although it was a marginal
commercial success, partially hampered
by Magnavox’s marketing strategies, it
may have been the inspiration for Nolan
Bushnell’s introduction of Pong. (See the
story on page 19.)
Ralph Baer didn’t stop with the
Odyssey. He helped develop Coleco’s
Telestar gaming system and invented
Simon, Maniac, and a lot of other games
and devices. He holds many patents and
is still consulting.
15
Above: Ralph Baer’s 1971 patent for“Television Gaming and Training Apparatus.”
Above left: Ralph Baer with Odyssey Game, 1972.
The “Fox and Hounds”game hardware.
The Brown Boxsystem thatbecame theOdyssey.
p.2-16 3/28/02 10:34 AM Page 15
he first part of Nolan Bushnell’s story takes place
in the mid-1960s. The day Nolan Bushnell first
encountered Spacewar was the day that may have changed
history. It was on the campus of the University of Utah. The
discovery was especially fortuitous because Bushnell not
only recognized a good game when he saw it, he knew
what it could become.
Bushnell reveals, “In some ways I was smitten by Spacewar
not just because it was fun to play, but I also saw commercial
opportunity; I knew how much good games earned. But it was
something I put at the back of my mind. It was running on an
IBM 7900 or something like that.A big IBM machine. Certainly
too expensive to be feasible economically.
“Now fast-forward to me coming to California in 1969
to work at Ampex,” continues Bushnell. “I was an amateur-
ranked Go player, and one of the guys I played Go with
worked up at the AI lab at Stanford. He told me about the
Spacewar game they had and I told him, ‘I played that in
college. I’d like to see how it works.’ So he took me up
there one evening and we played a lot of Spacewar. That
rekindled my enthusiasm for the game and my belief in
its commercial potential.”
Bushnell’s first project was Computer Space, a single-
player version of Spacewar that he created in his spare time.
For his workshop, he converted his daughter’s room, and
two-year-old Britta slept in the living room.
“My original plan was quite different from how it turned
out. I originally planned to do it based on a Data General
1600—to have a minicomputer running multiple games. My
technical addition, as I originally saw it, was going to be a
very cheap monitor. Then what kept happening, the comput-
er kept running out of cycle time—it was so blindingly slow.
I thought the cost of the machine would outstrip its ability to
earn. I almost gave it up. I cut down to four games, but that
put the economics on the edge. I kept having to make the
monitors smarter, taking over tasks. Then I had my real
epiphany. ‘Hell,’ I thought, ‘I’m not going to use the Data
General. I’ll do it all in hardware.’ So I went from using a
$4,000 computer to maybe $100 worth of components.”
Ultimately, he completed the design of Computer Space,
creating the whole thing in hardware. But he still had to
find a way to market it. How that came about was another
bit of serendipity.
“I had a dentist appointment and my dentist had another
patient who worked at Nutting & Associates. I was chatting
with the dentist through a mouthful of cotton about what
I was working on. He said you should talk to this guy. And
that’s how I first heard about Nutting. They were a company
who had done one product and were in trouble. They were
not particularly successful at that time; they were looking for
anything, so they jumped at it. Maybe a stronger company
would not have taken the risk.”
Computer Space released in 1971. It is widely considered an
unsuccessful debut, but it did make money, and, more impor-
tantly, it gave Bushnell some idea of the demographics of
video arcade games at a time when there was no such thing.
“Computer Space did very well on college campuses and in
places where the education level was higher. However, there
weren’t any arcades as such back then.You had to put machines
in bowling alleys and beer bars.That was the market. If you
couldn’t do well in Joe’s Bar and Grill, you had no chance.
Computer Space did horribly in the typical American beer bar.”
T
Sometimes a Great Notion
16 HIGH SCORE! P R O L O G U E
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