Robert Stein Loses out on Tetris

Robert Stein Loses out on Tetris

During the negotiations for the rights to Tetris, the man who first purchased the rights to the game from Russia made a critical mistake. Because Robert Stein failed to pay the Russian Government what he had owed for pc rights to the game, The Soviet Ministry of Software...
Interview: Nolan Bushnell

Interview: Nolan Bushnell

While managing the games department at Lagoon Amusement Park in the 60s, a young college student named Nolan Bushnell had an idea. Instead of managing and maintaining other vendor's games, why not start a company and produce his own? It wasn't that easy of course, but out of...
Al Alcorn and Explains the Need for Preservation

Al Alcorn and Explains the Need for Preservation

During a 2015 interview with Games Industry.biz, Atari Co-Founder Al Alcorn mentioned the importance of and current state of gaming preservation. He showed concern for the industry in this matter because there's no central location for such a thing. "It always amazes me how much interest there is...
Nolan Bushnell Mandates Success at Atari

Nolan Bushnell Mandates Success at Atari

On August 3, 1973, Nolan Bushnell issued a memo to the engineering department of Atari with an eight-point action plan. These points included a specific quantity of Gotcha arcade machines, sufficient staff to be available when "emergency projects" arose, and plans for a color version of Pong. Nolan...
George Plimpton Starts a (Console) War

George Plimpton Starts a (Console) War

In 1979, Mattel Electronics released what would be the first viable competitor to Atari with its new Intellivision console. In order to separate themselves from Atari, Mattel released a series of ads starring acclaimed American writer George Plimpton. In these ads, Atari and Intellivision were placed side by...
Warren Robinett Waxes Poetic

Warren Robinett Waxes Poetic

In June of 1979, Warren Robinett, a programmer at Atari, submitted the source code to the second game he'd developed for Atari. The game was called Adventure, and it would be the last game he would develop for the company, leaving soon after submitting the title for production....
Business Advice from Nolan Bushnell

Business Advice from Nolan Bushnell

Nolan Bushnell is the type of person who seems to always have an idea. To that end, he also follows through and works to implement the idea. In an interview with CNN in 2002, he was asked about his ability to continue being inspired. In that interview, he...
Shigeru Miyamoto Weighs in on Tetris

Shigeru Miyamoto Weighs in on Tetris

In the mid eighties, Tetris was being quietly passed around the video game industry. When it made it's way to Nintendo, Then Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi asked game industry legend Shigeru Miyamoto to try it out. When Yamauchi asked Miyamoto a few days later if Tetris was any...
Goodbye to a Legend; The Passing of Bernie Stolar

Goodbye to a Legend; The Passing of Bernie Stolar

Growing up in the 90's, I was enamored with the "Console war," the battle between Sega and Nintendo. I found myself strictly on the Nintendo side, but was also intrigued by Sega. A friend of mine had Genesis and would spend hours, sometimes days on it. While I...