#Sente games license

Bushnell knew Atari needed additional capital in order to launch the Atari 2600. Jobs and Wozniak went on to start their own personal computer company: Apple. They created their own personal computer and actually offered the idea and design to Bushnell. Bushnell had hired two programmers named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The path to the Atari 2600 is marked with a few intriguing chicanes, but two really bear notice: 1.

#Sente games license

Atari had to pay $700,000 to license the patents, but Atari had more than enough wind at its back to launch the next phase of its company plan: Atari 2600. Atari fought the lawsuit, but records in a guest book Bushnell had seen a test of the Odyssey. Pong's success drew the ire of Magnavox as it believed Bushnell had infringed on one of its patents: The Magnavox Odyseey and its tennis game, both created by Ralph Baer. Atari also sold dedicated Pong home consoles through 1977. Atari sold over 8,000 arcade units by March 1973 and Bushnell claims that over 38,000 were sold before the game went out of production. Pong was a monster hit, snowballing from its success at Andy Capp's Tavern in Grass Valley, CA (where the game malfunctioned from being stuffed with too many quarters). Pong is practically synonymous with Atari and videogames, but the story behind Pong's evolution and success is not without a bump or two. Bushnell hired Al Alcorn as an engineer and the company set out to make its next product: Pong. The name comes from the classic Chinese board game, Go. In 1972, Bushnell had to surrender the Syzygy name as it already in use by other companies, and chose Atari.

Computer Space was a minor success, earning a lot of attention for its inventive, smooth-surface cabinet that looked like a prop from Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

Computer Space was a clone of Spacewar, the famous sci-fi shooter created by Steve Russell at MIT in the 1960s. Syzygy's first and only product was Computer Space, the first commercially sold coin-operated videogame arcade cabinet in the world. In 1971, Bushnell started Syzygy, the company that would later become Atari, with partner Ted Dabney. Nolan+Bushnell Atari may no longer be the powerhouse it once was in videogames, but the footprint and influence it had in the industry is without detraction.