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Comments from Bill Pitts and Nolan Bushnell about the start of the arcade videogame industry
#236159 - 10/12/10 02:06 PM
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Here's an article that excerpts Tristan Donovan's new book Replay - The History of Video Games. He interviews both Bill Pitts and Nolan Bushnell, who actually met while both were working on Space Wars adaptations.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/pitts-recalls-making-americas-first-coin-op
This answers one of my questions. Galaxy Game did come out before Computer Space, though just by a little bit. This also really highlights a point I made before. Galaxy Game was a commercial arcade videogame venture. It just happened to fail after the location testing stage.
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Re: Comments from Bill Pitts and Nolan Bushnell about the start of the arcade videogame industry
[Re: ranger_lennier]
#236161 - 10/12/10 05:16 PM
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/pitts-recalls-making-americas-first-coin-op
----
Bushnell also shared his experience of the first Atari Pong production line: "They were horrible. We had a bunch of heroin addicts and things like that. They were stealing our TVs," he said. "We were young and dumb is what I like to say. But we learned quickly."
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It's funny reading that section of the book these days regarding the black and white tvs. Back then, even those tv sets were expensive products at the time.
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| Quantum Leaper |
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OCRer and Monkey Typist for Galaxy Game
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Re: Comments from Bill Pitts and Nolan Bushnell about the start of the arcade videogame industry
[Re: gregf]
#236172 - 10/12/10 08:15 PM
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> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/pitts-recalls-making-americas-first-coin-op
>
>
> ----
> Bushnell also shared his experience of the first Atari Pong production line: "They
> were horrible. We had a bunch of heroin addicts and things like that. They were
> stealing our TVs," he said. "We were young and dumb is what I like to say. But we
> learned quickly."
> ----
>
>
> It's funny reading that section of the book these days regarding the black and white
> tvs. Back then, even those tv sets were expensive products at the time.
Tube based TV were expensive and prices didn't drop until they started making Solid State TVs. ICs just didn't revolutionize computers but all sorts of electronics, in is interesting it took a couple more decades to get rid of the last Tube in the TV.
People even fixed TVs back then, it cheaper to buy a new TV today than to fix it...
I found it great that people would steal the TV in the machines, but in 71 or so, I had a color TV in my room, since my dad used to fix them. I remember getting rid of about a dozen of them in '81 or so, and putting them out of the trash, all but 1 was taken by people. Even in the early 80s, people still wanted TVs no matter what...
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Re: Comments from Bill Pitts and Nolan Bushnell about the start of the arcade videogame industry
[Re: Quantum Leaper]
#236177 - 10/12/10 08:56 PM
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I just dumped 5 or so fixed freq VGA monitors about 6 months ago. People STILL snapped them up. There was a reason I was tossing them. You really dont want them...
"oh i will get to that some day" and eventually you have a huge pile of junk...
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Re: Comments from Bill Pitts and Nolan Bushnell about the start of the arcade videogame industry
[Re: lharms]
#236183 - 10/12/10 11:27 PM
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> "oh i will get to that some day" and eventually you have a huge pile of junk...
Or sit on them for a decade or more and hope to sell them for a small profit because nobody manufactures them anymore.
Kevin Eshbach
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