I found this gold at The Golden Age Arcade Historian, a new blog “dedicated to the history of arcade video games from the bronze and golden ages (1971 – 1984).” The photos are from one or more 1975 Play Meter magazines. Puppy Pong—you can see the edge of the poster to the right of the “intriguing portal”—refers to a cutesy table top version of Pong.
Speaking of Pong, Al Alcorn designed it. Not a bad accomplishment to put on your resume. The second guy is Joe Keenan (check the old school Pepsi can on his desk), who became president of Atari through a twist of irony. From Mental Floss:
Pinball distributors in the 1970s demanded exclusive deals for products before they would sign contracts. This would have impeded Nolan Bushnell’s ambitious plans to establish an entire industry. To get around the exclusivity requirements, Bushnell and his neighbor, Joe Keenan, secretly formed a second company that would “compete” against Atari, selling slightly modified Atari games to other distributors. They called it Kee Games. Ironically, Atari would later run into management trouble, while Kee Games continued operating smoothly and successfully. As a result, Joe Keenan was brought to Atari and promoted to president of the company.
Nolan Bushnell (third guy pictured) was, of course, the co-founder of and mastermind behind Atari. He looks kind of like a union boss in this photo. I feel like there’s a lit cigar perched on a 10-pound orange ashtray just off camera.
And here’s a February, 1973 Boston Herald article about Atari and the release of Pong.
Keith Smith, who writes The Golden Age blog, notes that Syzygy (an awful name thankfully scrapped because a hippie candle company was using it) had incorporated under the name Atari in 1972. (The article incorrectly refers to Atari co-founder Ted Dabney as Fred Dabney.)
I love how Bushnell describes the business: “leisure applications of technology.” He hoped that people would “stop for a game… and become hooked into dropping coin after coin into the slot…” I’d say things worked out pretty well for the leisure applications, slotted to become an $82 billion industry by 2017.
2 Warps to Neptune 