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Comment by intrasight | Hacker News Reader

>This is almost a fluff piece to promote a developer

Clearly you do not know who is Nolan Bushnell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell

Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America." Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.

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Clearly you do not know who is Nolan Bushnell

I would argue that he knows who Bushnell is better than you do. What you posted in no way invalidates what you quoted from the parent post. Yes, Bushnell started Atari. Since he sold, he's done...golly, I'd have to go look it up because all I remember is a string of forgettable (duh) games that he put his name on because "founder of Atari".

Yeah, I'm not on the bandwagon either.

Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.

Okay, sure. How many are still going, and how many didn't completely sink the money of the respective investors?

I get that Bushnell is a smart game guy, but IMO Atari was a lightning strike he's been trying to replicate ever since.

First I think the original parent is spot on about this being an ad spot for Bushnell's newest venture.

On the lighting only striking once though you are certainly off base. Chuck E Cheese was big in it's own right and I'm sure you have heard of at least one of the other companies he started; it's called Pixar.

The link between the Bushnell-founded Kadabrascope, sold to Lucas in 1984 in a fire sale to save Chuck E. Cheese, and the founding of Pixar in 1986 as a spin-off of Lucasfilm's Computer Division (which was founded in 1979) is hazy.

Yes, Bushnell created what probably became a part of Pixar, but calling him a founder is pushing it.

True enough; founder is stretching, but there is definitely a link there that as an outsider is difficult for us to really measure. If I had called it Kadabrascope though; most people wouldn't know what I'm referring to ;-)

No doubt though he is a smart business man with multiple ventures under his belt. I do believe he really has a passion for what he does as well; the fact that he is still doing this in his 70s when he surely has plenty of F-You money says something about his passion for this industry.

I'll give you half a point on CEC, but the founding of CEC was more about getting more Atari units into communities that wouldn't allow arcades.

And, no, Bushnell had nothing to do with Pixar, which had been around for 4-5 years at LucasFilm before CEC sold off Kadabrascope to Lucas in a fire sale. Pixar started with Ray and Catmull.

Atari wasn't even a 'good' company. The original Atari basically invented arcade games and the home console (2600 or VCS) but everything they did afterwards was a complete disaster. Including causing the video game crash, some home computers that never really competed, a bunch more flopped consoles, not to mention they drove incredible talent away that went on to create companies like Activision, and in the process only really created about 10 notable games.

Some of their home computers competed pretty well.

The Atari 8-bit series (400/800) had a significant chunk of market share in the early 80's. Not among the top three, but there were so many incompatible platforms in those days, and Atari 400/800 was one of the more common and well-supported ones for sure. http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/

Then, the ST didn't do so hot in the US, but here in Europe it was a well-known platform, nearly as popular as the Amiga. Roughly 75% of sold Atari ST's were sold in Europe.

Most famously, nearly every recording studio you'd care to name would have ST's in the control room well into the 90's and in some cases early 00's, due to their built-in MIDI capabilities.

My first gaming was done on my C64 and my bestie had an Atari 800 which we loved because cartridges meant fast load times, my C64 only had cassette tape. He then got an Atari ST which we also thought was a really good computer. This is in the UK. I was so jealous of that 800 back then, it was an impressive machine.

Edit: hey Ross, if you're out there, it's been 20 years, I still remember the good times!

I've had lunch with the guy. My point still stands - he's not just "some developer".

I envy you.

He tried to bring back cocktail cabinets as a 1v1 casual arcade machine for bars, talking about a celebration of in-person social gaming in an age of faceless online gaming and solo games. I loved the idea. Didn't pan out.

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