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Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to keynote LA Games Conference

by Jason Dobson on Apr 23rd 2009 8:30AM

The man created both Pong and Chuck E. Cheese's pizza, so you'll have to forgive us if we take pause whenever Nolan Bushnell opens his bearded maw. The Atari founder is slated to take the stage at next week's LA Games Conference, and will offer his thoughts on the current crop of consoles as well as where he believes the industry is headed. Straight into the nearest uWink, no doubt.

Bushnell is just one of several speakers pegged to headline the event, which will include additional keynotes from PopCap top dog David Roberts, Qualcomm exec Mike Yuen and Benchmark Capital partner Mitch Lasky. The event is scheduled for April 28-29 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in LA, and should make for an interesting primer for E3's media bombardment in June.

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Tags: atari, chuck-e-cheese, la-games-conference, nolan-bushnell, pong

Reader Comments (31)

That cheesy grin frightens me. O_o

That's a pedosmile if I've ever seen one.

Definitely not the kind of smile you'd wanna see while at Chuck E. Cheese with the children.

is that a fake pipe in his left hand?

..or is he just happy to see you?

Does this pipe look fake?
http://www.iconocast.com/B000000000000177_German/Q4/News8_0.jpg

Can you have more than one keynote speaker?

Jason,

The man STOLE pong

Chuck E Cheese pizza is actually really fucking good.

BUUUUSHNEEEEEELL! They should have gotten Baer. Bushnell's just a good businessman(i.e. good a backstabbing the brains behind whatever he's selling).

i like chuck e. cheese's. i should figure a way to hook up an atari to my tv

Uh, sir, your head is smoldering...

He's a tad disconnected from modern gaming yo.

and lemmie tell ya folks. That pipe is not only probably real....but filled to the brim with weed.

The good shit too...because the bush don't smoke none of that cheap shit.

funny you should say that...

Bushnell tells the story about when he first started Atari and needed workers to build the arcade cabinets. He called the unemployment office asked if they could send some people over and they sent over all the stoners that they couldn't place anywhere else. You could smell weed in the air when you walked through the factory but on the upside the employees chose having a kegger on the loading dock rather than raises.

Pong was not invented by Nolan Bushnell. It was invented by Ralph Baer, and was stolen by Nolan Bushnell.

Time to do your homework.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

Actually, you need to do your homework. Pong was a rip-off of a ping pong game for the Magnavox Odyssey, invented by Ralph Baer. Bushnell saw the ping pong game at an Odyssey demo and stole the idea. He was even sued for it. There's a great article about it in the latest Game Informer.

Article didn't say he invented Pong. It says he created it, which is true, regardless if he stole the idea.

Well, while I just created a poop it doesn't mean I invented the concept.

This is more along the lines if I say, created a game about a Spanish VCR repair man named Marco, who leaps into another world. Using a pogo stick and magic roots to embiggen him, he bounces from level to level occasionally jumping in an air duct to retrieve doubloons all in an effort to rescue a debutante from an angry velociraptor.

Now did I invent Mario Bros. or did I create Marco using a similar concept?

@Ryan:

Given the simplicity of the Pong concept, and the hardware limitations at the time, any "variation" of the Pong concept would be almost identical to the original.

I'm familiar with it. The game for the Odyssey you're talking about was called Table Tennis. John Romero invented the first person shooter, but he doesn't go around suing everybody who tries to make their own.

True, Pong was visually similar to Table Tennis, but back then, the graphical capabilities of the consoles didn't allow for much variation. There's only so much you can do with two paddles and a ball.

Wups, that was meant for you, dogmatic.

I'm not talking about the lawsuits and/or the ethics of such. I'm just talking about the assumption that Pong was invented by Bushnell. It wasn't. The concept belongs to Baer. Bushnell stole it.

No one here said he invented it. And the "stolen" concept you're referring to is "electronic ping-pong," not the game Pong itself. If you want to go that route, then I could say Baer in fact stole the idea from William Higinbotham.

Sure, Bushnell took the idea, but he and Alcorn still came up with their own version. It's not like they outright stole the code. And certainly Bushnell is responsible for the widespread popularity of the game.

THANK YOU. That's one of the rules of game design. To take something and tweak it. He did say that he played Baer's game, but he made it better. So it's not like he used the same assests.

You can be inspired by a game, but just taking the idea isn't ripping it off unless you took the hardware and programs used to run it.

The problem is the claim that Bushnell "invented" Pong. He "created" pong, but did not invent the concept. It might seem like a small difference but it's really not. It's like saying Apple or Microsoft invented the GUI. The GUI was invented by Xerox PARC. Apple improved it, and MS made a half assed copy. Claiming that either Apple or MS invented the GUI would be clearly wrong.

Ok, once again. No one here is claiming that he invented it, you're the one who brought it up. Don't even get me started on the whole gui concept, I can already see how biased you are.

Dammit why does reply keep not working...

I'm just going to reveal that playing Pong and working at Chuck E. Cheese's are not fun at all.

Where do you live? BIZARRO WORLD?

I'm sorry for enjoying hip things, DAD.

is it me or does that monitor look like it has the dreamcast logo? I will have a moment of silence on 9-9-09

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Atari founder Nolan Bushnell to keynote LA Games Conference

Reader Comments (31)

Posted: Apr 23rd 2009 8:43AM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Apr 23rd 2009 1:23PM dogmaticatheist said

Posted: Apr 23rd 2009 12:56PM WiredKnight said

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Posted: Apr 23rd 2009 5:28PM dogmaticatheist said

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