← Ridiculous History
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- [00:00]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer, Max Magnavox Williams.
- [00:38]
B
Boop. Max, boop. The expeditioner Williams, 33, I believe under his belt. I think he's the 33rd one, it's true.
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A
That is Mr. Noel Brown.
- [00:50]
C
Hello.
- [00:50]
A
They called me Ben Bullen and we are unrepentant, unapologetic fans of video games. So much so that you can hear our obsession come through in casual conversation on air. You can also see video game episodes that we have done on various shows in the past, like Stuff of Genius, what was the first video game and of course the legendary podcast project by the Williams brothers Ephemeral.
- [01:18]
B
Oh my gosh, what a classic. Already a classic. A gem of the podcast world. Guys, I have been deep in video game nerd dom over the past week because a friend of the show, friend of mine, one of my oldest friends and a friend of yours, Ben Peyton, was visiting from New York and he is a fellow video game nerd and he helped me buff the heck out of two characters in two different games of mine that I had specced way, way, way wonkily. One was Monster Hunter Wilds, which I really love, and the other was Elden Ring where I never finished the dang game. I got stuck and it was apparently because I was doing a faith based build and I was, I had intelligence way maxed out and it didn't make any sense for the weapons I had. Some of that stuff is even too nerdy for me, but not for dear Peyton and he helped me and now I'm rocking it in volcano manner, baby.
- [02:09]
A
Nice, nice. Congratulations, man. I think I mentioned this on maybe off air, but maybe on air for stuff they don't want you to know. I will play just comfort food video games when I'm doing QAs. Stuff that I can play on mute. And I have been putting off finishing a wonderful little game called Ghost of Yotai.
- [02:32]
B
Middle game, you say? I heard it was massive.
- [02:34]
A
Little's not how I would describe that game. Well, I kept putting it off you guys and there is without spoiling it, it's very cinematic storytelling kind of open world stuff. And there is this happens in so many of these kinds of games where you get to a point in the game where it tells you are you sure you want to continue because you can't go back until this mission is completed. And ever since then I would look at our queue of QAs I'm saying Q. Cause that's one of Max's weird words. I would look at our queue of QAs to conduct to make sure we have our bleeps and bloops in the right place, and I would go, let me just keep doing side missions.
- [03:19]
B
I do it all the time, guys. I'm doing that right now in Borderlands. I'm about to get to the Timekeepers Lair. But rather than going there, I'm just doing all the little homework assignments from the mission posts where you basically go grab a gem and then run it around and dodge rippers and robots and stuff. But I think I'm about ready to rip off the band aid and ascend.
- [03:48]
A
It can be bittersweet, man. My guy in Yotai has killed every possible person with a bounty, has all the little fox charms and got really into sumi e. Anyway, we are saying that to prove our, if not our bona fides, to prove our enthusiasm for all things video game.
- [04:12]
B
Well, and also to show how far things have come.
- [04:14]
A
Oh yeah.
- [04:14]
B
I mean, these games are wild, man. They're huge. The graphics have gotten to the point where it looks like a movie sometimes, especially in the cutscenes, and just the depth and attention to detail is staggering. Truly is. And I think it's evidenced too by some of the excellent video game screen adaptations that we're seeing now. Things like Fallout and the Last of Us, like games truly have become a cinematic art form. I think more so now than ever. But they sure had some humble beginnings. Speaking of bleeps and bloops.
- [04:47]
A
Yeah. I consider video games a proper and legitimate form of literature at this point, you know, and we owe this all to the. To the humble beginnings, to the legendary games and creators of consoles who came before. So this is going to be our two part series on a little thing called Atari.
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C
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [05:18]
A
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- [05:52]
A
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B
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A
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- [07:48]
A
I don't know if you guys have ever been lucky enough to have the experience of like seeing an actual Magnavox Odyssey or playing an Atari. It was weird. It was such a nostalgia rush.
- [08:01]
B
There's a really cool toy museum that I think we went to together, Ben in Austin, Texas and they have a lot of the mega drives and all the old school machines, you know, on display, you know, museum style. But then they also have a little corner in the back where you can play weird old PC games. They've got like an old, you know, spec'd out old PC back there and some of these systems. So that's really the only experience I've had with it. I was a Nintendo baby. That was what was out the Christmas, the first Christmas I remember a video game existing.
- [08:33]
A
I remember playing Super Mario 1 with my dad. And we both didn't know that fireballs were unlimited. Once you got the flower, we thought you might, like, run out after three or 10, which made us play the game on an entirely different level of difficulty. You're playing like a Dark Souls game.
- [08:52]
B
Yes. I distinctly remember when I first played a video game, I would jerk the controller left and right physically with my arms because that was just the intuitive thing that I felt. And I'll never forget that. I must have been like, you know, six years old and I was just. That was what my mind wanted my arms to do.
- [09:08]
A
I still do that.
- [09:09]
B
Need some people do when they play for the. When they're people who are inexperienced, you'll see, you'll hand them a controller and they'll want to do the same thing.
- [09:15]
A
So some people do it when they're driving.
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, I've been playing Nier Automata.
- [09:19]
D
I finally picked that one up.
- [09:20]
B
And when you're in intense fight scenes.
- [09:22]
D
I have noticed that I move way.
- [09:24]
B
Too much and it does nothing.
- [09:26]
A
Well, it helps you, you know, and who are we to judge? I'm a big. I'm guilty of doing the stand up and walk while I'm playing thing, especially if it's really intense.
- [09:38]
B
Well, it's not for nothing that the switch startup screen warns you to affix the little loop around your wrist in case you fling the damn thing through a plate glass window. You know, wait, the Wii or the Switch too? It's the guy, you know, you can remove the controllers there still does sort of a Wii kind of thing. And they do have these little wrist straps, and I guess it's more to cover their butts in case someone does something dumb. But I always crack up when I see that.
- [10:05]
A
And this is one of our favorite times of the week, folks, when we get to hang together and record one of our favorite shows. Ridiculous history. Our research associate for this series is none other than Magnavox Williams himself.
- [10:18]
B
Magnavox Max. Yeah.
- [10:20]
A
So thank you, Max. And what we're seeing here is a lot of video game journalism and a lot of video game historians share similar experiences to what we just described. You know, about Nintendo, you know about Sega. If you were a rich kid, you might have had a Neo Geo. No offense. And of course PlayStation. But there is one word, term, concept that has sort of dominated the history of video games, and that is none other than Atari.
- [10:51]
B
And I gotta say, before digging into this excellent research brief courtesy of Magnavox, Max, I didn't know the origin of that word. And we're gonna get into that, and it's pretty clever. Let us set our minds back to 1969, in the earliest days of Atari, before it was, when it was just, you know, a glimmer in the eye of two guys, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, who met in 1969 when they were working for another really cool company called Ampex in Redwood City, California. And just to have an audio nerd moment for a second, Ampex makes or has made tape, magnetic tape, and reel to reel machines. And now there are really cool plug in versions of Ampex tape machines that sort of emulate the different types of magnetic tape and the different speeds that the reels would run at. So Ampex looms large in the world of pro audio, even to this day.
- [11:48]
A
And these guys, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, were following up on an obsession that Bushnell had had ever since his college days as an electrical engineering student in Utah. This is also coming to us, by the way, courtesy of great work by Keza McDonald at IGN, Dag Spicer for the Computer History Museum, and of course, Jamie Lindino for PCMag. All right, so Bushnell, he's fascinated, you guys, with one of the very first video games, something called Spacewar.
- [12:23]
B
That was an MIT thing, right? Didn't that, like, run in a lab, basically, in MIT and people would pop through to play it? That was about the only way you could get your hands on it.
- [12:31]
A
It was a huge computer at mit, and that came to us courtesy of a professor, Steve Russell and two of his students. And this is 1962, so very early days. Bushel would grab one of his frat bros and instead of going out and raising cane and drinking cheap beer, they would sneak into the computer lab.
- [12:54]
B
That's what engineering frat bros do to party, I guess.
- [12:58]
A
Now maybe they had beer while they were doing that. We don't know. We don't know. They definitely had beer.
- [13:04]
B
As we'll get to later in the story. Oh, that's right, the loosey goosey office policies of the Atari company. Whenever we talk about this era of computing, and I'm probably a broken record at this point, but I always have to recommend the excellent AMC show Halt and Catch Fire, which is about, like, the earliest days of, you know, Texas Instruments and what led to the personal computer. Somewhat fictionalized for sure, but it has to do with the Silicon Prairie, which was where Texas Instruments was created. And then some folks that start. Get their start there end up migrating to Silicon Valley and kind of making that what it is, but excellent needle drops. Just a fabulous show about the earliest days of computer nerdery.
- [13:48]
A
And Bushnell was definitely. Here's why we wanted to spend some time on his college education, because Bushnell was definitely in the right place at the right time. This is a very new, nascent, emergent industry. Computer graphics, like the idea of computer. Computer graphics are invented at his alma mater at the University of Utah in the 1960s by a guy named Ivan Sutherland, a pioneer of computer science. And if you looked around the world of academia and ivory towers at the time, the University of Utah was one of the primo spots to learn about computers. They had cutting edge equipment for their.
- [14:31]
B
Era, state of the art, which by today's standards would probably be laughable. And you could probably do the same level of programming on a smart fridge. Today you hear about people putting doom on smart fridges and stuff like that. Or, you know, on like a fricking. What do you call it? A Tamagotchi. It's just. It's incredible how much things have shrunken down in terms of physical size and just the amount of power you can pack into the smallest spaces.
- [14:56]
A
A hundred percent. Yeah. So the stuff that was state of the art in the early 1960s, if you looked at it now, it beep more like an artistic statement. But it's powerful history. So Spacewar, one of the earliest video games. Our buddy Bushnell is in rarefied air. He's one of the very few individuals who can play these kind of games on campus computers. And at the same time, there's some parallel experiences that inform his career.
- [15:28]
B
For sure, we're talking about the arcade. And when we think of an arcade today, we think of that little cove at your local mall. Especially growing up, that had like arcade cabinets. The first time I ever saw a game like Mortal Kombat was at my local mall arcade.
- [15:44]
A
A game that has four different players. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X Men had more than four. Those were great ways to bond with your friends. And I gotta tell you, I can't wait till we all go to Japan with each other. Because the arcades there, the arcade culture is very much alive. And they took what was happening in the United States and just went hog wild with it.
- [16:10]
B
For sure. We're super lucky here in Atlanta to have some pretty incredible Japanese inspired arcades. I believe at Perimeter Mall, there's a place that does all these gachapon machines. And then they have like all the crazy Japanese rhythm games. And then at another mall, Cumberland Mall, there's a place called round one, that is incredibly heavy on the Japanese arcade machine fighters and rhythm games. Stuff that you would really only typically see at a con or something or in Japan, to your point. But Bushnell is doing a little summer job situation or maybe a holiday job, make a little extra money at an arcade at the time. And we're seeing mainly pinball machines in the early days of arcades. Bing, bing, bang, bang, bong. Coin operated pinball machines and the early days of that are very beautifully portrayed in the film Licorice Pizza from Paul Thomas Anderson. So do check that one out too, if you want to get a glimpse into this period in time. They were, as we said, coin operated entertainment halls similar to slot machines or pachinko parlors you might see over in Japan, games of chance, ways to win prizes, things like that.
- [17:25]
A
And so Bushnell looks around at this and says, huh, I wonder if I can combine these two ideas of computer games and arcades. Places where people are. People would gather for recreation. And so essentially he's coming up with this concept of the classic 1980s arcade. Now you have game cabinets that take a quarter, what have you, places where the parents can drop the teens off all Saturday and give them a little pocket money for the food court. This concept of the halcyon days of arcade halls, it probably would have happened independently at some point, but the way history shakes out, it happens because of Bushnell and Atari. And it takes a while to get there though, because these guys are, him and his associate Ted Dabney, they're making the first version of this stuff. They're the guys who say, let's take some of these cool computer games that have been hidden in universities. Let's model, monetize them, let's make them operate based on coin insertion and let's make a company that sells this idea. Now, the etymology may be weird, but the name of the company that they started working for when they were envisioning this idea. We don't know the etymology too well, but it is called nutting associates. Ha ha he he ha ho.
- [19:01]
B
Not to be confused with Cumming, Georgia, which we love to talk about.
- [19:07]
A
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A
Let me start by saying it's a.
- [19:50]
B
Great day to be a gray shirt team Rubicon.
- [19:53]
A
You know, it truly is a team.
- [19:55]
B
Those folks, myself included, all had one.
- [19:57]
A
Desire, which is helping folks in disaster.
- [20:00]
B
Trying to be a little bit of.
- [20:01]
A
Hope in a really, really bad situation.
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C
It's like magic you guys. So put down your doom scroller and pick up your faith in humanity and join me, Jenna for the Ripple Effect. It's a reminder that you can start a ripple that changes everything. You really can. We give just that nugget of hope helping other people.
- [20:21]
D
For some of our gray shirts, it's.
- [20:24]
C
During a time when they need help and by helping others, it helps them. Listen to the Ripple Effect with Jenna Kim Jones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:36]
D
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- [21:36]
C
You see it instantly. It's Coldwater Creek, the mark of exceptional workmanship and signature touches inspired by a Mountain west heritage. Distinctive styles created from quality fabrics, silhouettes perfected with just the right dress feel good fits offering ease of movement and thoughtful details to elevate your look. Coldwater Creek's authenticity is embodied in every piece, embracing its confident spirit that carries through to today. Discover Coldwater Creek clothing designed to fit your life the way you want for a wardrobe you can count on season after season. Visit coldwatercreek.com Shop the new spring collection at 20% off $75 or more with code iheart20.
- [22:24]
B
The game that they started was called Computer Space. This was their first. I mean obviously they're still heavily influenced by Spacewar. So they work on this game called Computer Space. It's released in 1971. It didn't exactly set the world on fire and was viewed as something of a failure by the brass over at Nutting. But it was a pretty big swing and it still sold 1500 units and made Bushnell and Dabney, Bushnell Rather and Dabney, enough cash to kind of go out on their own and start their own company focusing on coin operated electronic games.
- [23:04]
A
And it's really cool that they got a slice of the pie from those sales and that R and D, because that doesn't always happen in tech companies as we know.
- [23:13]
B
A lot of thievery in tech and back in these days too, industrial espionage, things like that. I've often talked about it's different world, but similar development process. Electronic instruments like by Japanese companies like Roland, they would cover up the proprietary components on the circuit boards inside of these things with different material. So that if anyone were to snap a picture of the circuit board, they couldn't see the layout of these chips that would make the sounds that the Roland say Juno 106 would make. And it also down the line led to some, some flaws because these coatings would build up moisture underneath, et cetera. But they were doing it for real reasons, which was a real cutthroat kind of space race, space war for sure.
- [24:02]
A
And we also see across various industries, we see that employees, often very brilliant, talented employees might not get their work recognized. They just get their salary, but they don't get a share of the profits from their amazing ideas. So good you nutting for paying these guys out a little bit extra. They got enough money, as we said, to create their own company that they originally were gonna call Syzygy, which is a real word, it's spelled Syzygy.
- [24:40]
B
Great word. Can be a thing referring to alignment between celestial bodies in opposition. Or if you wanted to make it a little more broad, just a pair of connected or corresponding things.
- [24:52]
A
Yeah. And it turns out that they would have to change the name. They founded it in 1971, but then they learned the name was already in use out there in California. So they changed the name of their company to atari Incorporated in 1972. And I think we're all very interested in the, the etymology here because that is a Japanese word that is used when we're talking about the Chinese game Go. Have you guys ever played Go?
- [25:25]
B
I haven't. My first exposure to it was in the movie PI. And I know that it is beloved by a lot of computer programmer types and any other enthusiasts of these types of strategy games. But it does have, I think there's an unlimited number of moves or it's some kind of insane number of combinations of moves and that's what it's known for. So you can really easily see how someone that was interested in that board game might be able to parlay that kind of stuff into a video game.
- [25:55]
A
It's so hard, man. Especially when you're playing with someone who is very familiar with the game or invested in it. I always enjoy playing Go and I don't think I will ever win against someone who knows what they're doing.
- [26:10]
B
I've never even attempted it. It just seems a little over above my pay grade. But I'm fascinated by the culture surrounding it. It is widely known as being a game for brainy types.
- [26:21]
A
So this is. Okay, so Chinese game, Japanese word Ataru. Ataru. Ataru. Literally meaning to hit a target. Ataru. And in this context, the name Atari means something kind of like I'm about to win.
- [26:42]
B
Clever. Clever, yeah. Like a check, right? Like a pre. A pre winning declaration.
- [26:47]
A
Yes. Yeah, like check in chess. And this is, I think it's a really smart name because it is aspirational too. It's telling you that you, by playing an Atari game, are yourself about to win.
- [27:00]
B
It's also good branding because some other options that they were considering were Senti, Sente and Hane, which to me on paper would not be immediately clear how to pronounce. Whereas Atari is clear instantly. It's snappy and it just, I don't know, it has a nice ring to it.
- [27:16]
A
Yeah, Hane, I appreciate that point. This occurred to me as well. Ahare would be be off putting to American consumers.
- [27:24]
B
You know how many people would pronounce it Hain?
- [27:26]
A
Everybody would pronounce it Hain because Hanes was a thing. They would be like video game underwear. So another cool thing that Atari had going for them was better technology. Dabney, the co founder we mentioned earlier, he invented the early tech that allowed dots to move on a screen without having a room sized computer powering them.
- [27:51]
B
Yeah, I think we're talking about early versions of microprocessors and integrated circuits. I think that's kind of. Again, I'm not an expert, but I'm fascinated by this stuff. So it was called the spot motion circuit and to your point, Ben, it allowed a dot to move up and down, left and right on a screen. Two dimensional space. And it was very different from the Mega Mega Mega Lab. You know, bound computers that powered space with. Yeah, these were still quite large though because we're talking about the early days of arcade cabinets.
- [28:24]
A
Yeah, these are still big, like refrigerator sized pieces of furniture that can play a game with you. Like the later smart fridges.
- [28:34]
B
Isn't it funny how now our buddy Matt Frederick from Stuff They Don't Want yout to Know has one of these, but they have these like sort of nostalgia arcade machines that just look big on the outside, but inside it's probably all on a Raspberry PI or something like that. Like a fridge. Freaking pinky sized, you know, device.
- [28:50]
A
That's how my emulator is too. It's. I, I bought the, not the nostalgia one, but the, the paired down in form factor, paired down console thing.
- [29:01]
B
Like a desktop size. Right.
- [29:02]
A
It looks tight. It looks like the size of a small hard drive.
- [29:06]
B
I know what you're talking about.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah, those are cool.
- [29:08]
B
Yeah. Matt's got one that straight up sits on the ground and looks like it's really, really cool. Has a lot of great fighting games. Has insane. Has like every game on it. Like everyone you could possibly imagine. So at this point in 1972, Bushnell went to a demo of the first ever home video game console to Max's nickname, the Magnavox Odyssey, which was a little, very 70s looking brown and beige plastic box.
- [29:38]
A
Yeah, this thing, it reminds me of wood grain, but that's just because of the time in which.
- [29:45]
B
That's the 70s thing I'm picturing too. Very like. Yeah, looks like wood paneling you'd see in 70s homes and kitchens.
- [29:51]
A
You know, we're going to sit on the Papasad and play Magnavox. Might make it to the waterbed.
- [29:56]
B
Yep, yep. Curl our toes in the shag. Carpets.
- [30:00]
A
Yeah, I love it. Please check out our episode on Stuff of Genius for more about the Magnavox Odyssey. This thing did something amazing. As an at home console, you were able to play, play different games, multiple different games. Now they were all silent, but you would see things like table tennis. That probably looks familiar to a lot of people. And the Magnavox was pretty successful. IT sold around 330,000 units across North America and Europe when it was released for sure.
- [30:34]
B
And while it did allow you to play different games, they were like you said, silent bend games, including the delightfully charmingly named Table Tennis or Tennis for Two, maybe That's different. I think this one was just called Table Tennis. We didn't mention Tennis for Two. That comes in a. Nope. That was the very, very, very early game. Tennis for two was in 1958. Insane. Anyway, this machine was limited to what it had inside of it. Like, these were hard programmed games. There were no cartridges yet at this point.
- [31:04]
A
Yes. And there had been those games we mentioned previously. Tennis for 2 and 58. Spacewar in 62. And then there have been more commercial games like Computer Space, of course. But the mythical force, the behemoth that was to change video games forever is coming onto the stage. It is, Paul.
- [31:29]
B
Oh, man, what a banger that is. And again, it's so quaint looking back on it. You got these little white bars on either side of the screen and then the little dots that were able to move up, down, left and right. And it was all just based on, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? The trajectory. You know, like physics. Kind of the most basic of physics. Like the ball would bounce, you'd move the paddle so it would bounce and then catch it on the other side.
- [31:54]
A
I love it. There's a live action. That's a weird way to say it, but there's a live action pong machine that's actually quite popular in Japanese arcades. It's like a standby.
- [32:04]
B
That sounds intense. How does that work? It's like literally, it's like a ball and paddles.
- [32:10]
A
It's like Tron kind of. It's similar to air hockey, but there's no hockey. It's all mo magnet magnetized stuff.
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B
So is it vertical, though? Or is it like.
- [32:20]
A
No, it's horizontal.
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B
I got, you got, you got, you got.
- [32:22]
A
And so you've got your little, your. You've got your little line that functions as your paddle and there's a. A square that looks like a liveaction pixel.
- [32:32]
B
That's so cool.
- [32:33]
A
And it, it boops and bops around and it gets really intense, man.
- [32:36]
B
I bet.
- [32:37]
A
Yeah.
- [32:37]
B
It also reminds me, I mean, it's, it's. It's not the same, but a certain level similarity to fust.
- [32:43]
A
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially with the fact that it can be so weirdly competitive.
- [32:51]
B
Guys, I'm just gonna put out right now. We're about to do a few episodes on the history of kind of interesting niche sports, and I put forth that we should maybe add to that down the line and do one on the history of foosball.
- [33:02]
A
For sure. Yeah.
- [33:03]
B
And that early ones were hand Carved. And I would love to hear more about them.
- [33:08]
A
All right, let's put it on the list. I'm also glad that those real life POG machines in Japan are located in arcades, not in bars. Because just like foosball, plus a couple of beers with the buddies, that stuff could get intense, you know?
- [33:24]
B
Can't ever. Yeah, yeah. So Pong was the very first release of this new company, Atari.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it is the first project of the company. There's another guy we need to introduce, also a former Ampex employee, Al Alcorn. Cool name, Al. Ampex is a big name in audio and video recording. This gives Alcorn the background he needs, the training he needs to design the game called Pong. And when he starts, there are no microprocessors at this time. So he builds Pong using analog circuitry. And very, very few people knew how to design in this, this new field we're calling digital video. So the first prototype for POG is a wooden cube covered with, yes, faux wood grain, a screen, two knobs, and then a coin box. Because they're not giving up on the coin idea.
- [34:26]
B
Whip ain't got no gas tank, but it's still got wood grain. It's true. And this is coming from Dag Spicer over at the Computer History Museum. So let's get down to the display. We know what the device looks like, but, you know, there weren't like LCD monitors at this point. What are we talking here? How would you, how would you make, you know, turn those bits into. Into video?
- [34:48]
A
Yeah, it's a good question. Well, it depends on how much money you're willing to spend at the TV store.
- [34:56]
B
I guess we're talking about prototype stuff at this point.
- [34:58]
A
Right, Right, right. So AL is not shelling out for the top of the line boob tube. Instead they buy a cheap 12 inch inch black and white TV set from just a store up the way. And they use that in place of a standalone display because the standalone display is kind of expensive at the time. And this is a prototype. Right. We just want to prove that it works. Then we can worry about making it sexy. Everyone deserves to be connected. That's why T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. Switch the table T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out. Check the math. @t mobile.com switch and now T mobile is in US cellular stores.
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- [38:50]
B
So they have their sort of makeshift headquarters at a tavern called Andy Capps, which is, I believe that was a. Isn't that the guy that has the hot fries?
- [38:58]
A
Yes.
- [38:59]
B
He's also like a, you know, what do you call it?
- [39:01]
A
Comic strip.
- [39:01]
B
Comic strip fellow. This is in Sunnyvale, which I believe is a suburb of San Francisco. Bushnell's got pals there. They set it up there as sort of a testing ground and it gets pretty popular.
- [39:14]
A
Yeah, it's like his cheers, his local. It's where he goes to unwind after work. So of course he has friends there and he knows management. And a few days after they install the machine, they realize that it has stopped working. This is not uncommon with prototypes. But when Al comes in to the bar to check out what's going on, he says, oh, wait, Pong hasn't failed. It's just entirely choked up with quarters gorged with coins. Yes. So many people are playing this game that it can't accept any more quarters. So it's not going to work. We got to empty out the coin box.
- [39:56]
B
This is good data, man, because it really proves to them that this thing might have some legs and the ability to be rolled out to a much larger audience.
- [40:06]
A
Yeah. And Bushnell is having one of those watershed moments because his dreams are being proven correct. Right. And he says this could be much bigger than just a corner at old Andy Capps. We had already already noted that the Magnavox Odyssey likely inspired Bushnell and company to create Pong in the first place. And this also was whetting the appetite of the consumer market because more and more people were familiar with the idea of at home video games. And this makes Bushnell think, wait, we can make way more money selling directly to somebody's house than we can just putting a machine in a bar and waiting for quarters to run. Roll it right.
- [40:53]
B
They're already jumping ahead to the next phase. Not just like rolling these things out as arcade machines and some of those arcades of Bushnell's youth. Let's just put it right in folks living rooms.
- [41:03]
A
Absolutely. And this is a pretty aggressive demand to lay on our pal Al. So we're saying, okay, you already did a great job making this thing and getting the form factor smaller than we could have imagined. Imagined. Kudos. Tally ho. I need you to make it even smaller so we can sell it to kids at home. This is where Alcorn creates kind of a video game. Avengers or Justice League, A hit squad, A team in Grass Valley, which is out in California's historic Gold Country. And they say, okay, we're as a team, we're going to figure out how to implement a custom integrated circuit that allows us to hack the economy of scale so we can produce Pong at a massive level and keep the price competitive. Because it doesn't matter how good it is if people can't afford to pay for it.
- [42:01]
B
Right, Exactly. Those are the ones that you mentioned that only the doctor's kids had in your neighborhood.
- [42:06]
A
So why are they in gold country? They're doing this because they want to get away from the hubbub and distraction of Atari's main production facilities in Silicon Valley, which are already cranking out arcade machines.
- [42:20]
B
Right. So from this more solitary kind of atmosphere, they brought in a few new faces. Bob Brown and Harold Lee, who were some engineers whose task was to fit this entire game onto a single chip, which is a tall order.
- [42:36]
A
Yeah, it's a tall milkshake to sip for sure. And they are able to figure this out. Spoiler, right? Anybody who lives in 2026 knows this, but there is an endear inspiring startup energy, cinematic story to it because the wiring is done by Al's wife, Katie. It's like a family affair, which I find so endearing.
- [42:59]
B
And this is why I keep bringing up Halt and Catch Fire. Because it really shows this kind of early punk rock spirit of the earliest computer makers and folks doing things in their garage. And I can't recommend that show enough because every time I hear about someone's wife doing a thing like in the bedroom or whatever, using the space and the materials they had, that's what my mind jumps to. This product was able to be built and it was an instant success when the massive retailer Sears decided to take it on as an item that they would have for sale.
- [43:32]
A
Check out our Sears episode, by the way, folks.
- [43:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, instant houses. Well, not instant, but you know, catalog.
- [43:38]
A
Houses, mail order houses.
- [43:39]
B
Yeah, you know, William S. Burrows house. He passed away a while ago, but his estate manager, whose name is escaping me, just passed away last week. And this house that this guy maintained, William S. Burroughs final residence, was in fact a Sears catalog house.
- [43:54]
A
Oh, nice, nice. I believe my parents first house was a Sears catalog. Oh, that's cool. Do they still have it? No, they sold that in the 90s, 1990s. So just to verify. Now we know that this can be the deciding factor for any startup company's success when a larger company offers you visibility, promotion and distribution. So Sears, you know, they're a big dog. They're not ordering Atari products one at a time. They order 200,000 units as their very first individual order. This is a huge challenge for this up and comer Atari because now they have to make 200,000 units in time for the 1975 Christmas season. So they rush to find extra assembly buildings. They're hiring staff left and right. They do get it over the finish line. They make the Sears Pong game. It's rebranded as Tell Games. Get it? Like television games. And it becomes, you know, it's hot. Like the Elmo back in the day. It's the must go Christmas gift.
- [45:04]
B
Tee hee. Jingle all the way indeed. Yeah, good problem to have, but certainly required some. What they call in the games industry today, crunch. But things aren't all, you know, sunshine and daffodils for the Atari company. They run into pretty quickly, some legal hurdles.
- [45:22]
A
Yeah, this is not all trumpets and angel farts for these guys. It's 1974, and the creator of the Magnavox Odyssey, Ralph Baer, says to his employers, he says, look, these guys are ripping us off with this Atari malarkey. Atari malarkey. We've gotta sue them. And this Bushnell guy has copied the idea for Paul entirely from that demo of table tennis that he saw in 1972. We can prove it because he signed the guest book.
- [45:57]
B
Not entirely untrue. But then the question becomes about, like, where is the novelty? You know what I mean? Like, just because you made a game that mimics a sport that already exists, does that mean no one else can ever do that again? And then it becomes sort of a matter for the courts to decide.
- [46:16]
A
Just because someone else made a hat, does that mean no one else can have a hat? Just because somebody else played a song on a guitar, does that mean guitar music is banned for everybody else?
- [46:28]
B
Well, exactly, Ben. And oftentimes in these types of cases, rather than roll the dice with a trial, settlement is recommended as the best option. And that's what happens. Bushnell and Atari, armed with some successful sales and probably a pretty decent legal team, settled out of court for around 400 between. 400 grand, reportedly, and a million bucks.
- [46:51]
A
That's right, folks. In the US justice system at least settling out of court is incredibly common. And one of the things that Some parties, like about settling out of court is you don't always have to disclose the financial amount of the settlement or admit wrongdoing. Or admit wrongdoing. So we know that Bushnell and Atari eventually settle. We don't know the exact sum that they settled for, but it did result in them becoming an official licensee for Magnavox. And this is good for Atari. It's expensive, but it's a good way to right the ship, because now they can continue selling games that may be seen as infringing upon Magnavox's patent, which is pretty broad. And this is something we still see in the world of tech today. Like what can and cannot be patented. Like clicking with a mouse.
- [47:46]
B
Right. Or podcasts, you know, publishing serialized audio content on a feed. We know where that one went. But there was a time in the early days where we were around where there were these patent trolls who were literally trying to sue certain podcasts over the use of this concept. To jump in here.
- [48:04]
A
This is still actually a big problem.
- [48:05]
B
In video games, which a certain very famous video game made by Nintendo and Game freak is suing another game called Palworld right now for patent breach. Basically saying, you cannot catch creatures in balls that we own that mechanic.
- [48:23]
A
Let's see in this. This is a weird sticky thing. Check out our series on IP and trademarks and patents as well. All the related gobbledygook there. And Hib Diddy hoopla. We know the Magnavog patent. It seems really broad today, but it's because they were first to market in a new field. Their patent at the time covered any television game that could be controlled by a player. Ew.
- [48:52]
B
That's super broad. Also, if you're interested in that kind of stuff, check out our episode on Apple Records versus Apple Computers.
- [49:00]
A
So Magnavox now becomes something like a patent troll themselves. They are putting in huge amounts of blood, sweat, and treasure into. Into tracking down and legally prosecuting people that they think are infringing their patent.
- [49:14]
B
But Atari seems to have wiggled their way out of this, and they're able to sort of stay the course and continue forward in developing new things because they're no longer having to worry about Magnavox going after them because they're licensed at this point, and Magnavox is too busy going after everybody else.
- [49:32]
A
Yeah. And it turns out, you know, a lot of historians will say that Atari probably would have won the case if it went to court. Court. But they're going to argue the settlement turned out to be a better play in the long Run. Because now Atari doesn't have to wage all those legal battles. Magnavox is getting bled dry.
- [49:52]
B
Excellent.
- [49:52]
A
And they're like functioning as a shield for Atari.
- [49:56]
B
Yep. Pretty bulldogs going after all the, all the little guys for sure.
- [50:01]
A
After all the Chihuahuas. Right. And this. So this is, as we said, a. A two part series. We're going to spend the week on Atari because we love it and there's a lot of ridiculous history to it already. We can't wait for you to join us later in the week for Atari Part 2. In the meantime, thanks to our super producer and research associate for this episode, Mr. Max Magnavox Williams.
- [50:26]
B
Huge thanks to Alex Williams for composing this bang and bop of a theme that you hear between your ears this very moment. Christopher Oiotis and Eve Chefko here in spirit.
- [50:37]
A
Mm. And a half hearted thread of legal action to our good friend Jonathan Strickland, AKA the pizzer.
- [50:46]
B
Mm. Litigation's always on the table with that guy.
- [50:48]
A
You just can't. You never know where he's gonna move next. You know what I mean? He's tricksy.
- [50:53]
B
Nope, you sure don't. AJ Bahamas Jacobs the puzzler. And you know, a second one to Jonathan Strickland, the quiz, I reckon.
- [51:01]
A
Rachel Big Spinach Lance. That's Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance, the rude dudes at Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us, you'll love them. And Noel, this is a fun one, man. I'm looking forward to part two.
- [51:12]
B
Ah, same. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You know, Donald, I just want to.
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D
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