Atari turns 50, and the godfather of video games talks about how to change the world - MarketWatch

Jun 27, 2022

That’s Atari founder and mass-market video game creator Nolan Bushnell’s advice to the current chief executive of Atari SA.

The two sat down to chat on the 50th anniversary of Atari, to talk about the early days of the video game pioneer, and of the iconic presence that the company and its logo created.

Read: Life isn’t a game, but it is game-like—and playing video games can make you smarter about money.

Bushnell and partner Ted Dabney developed and released “Computer Space” in 1971, which was considered to be the first cabinet-based video arcade game

That was followed by home versions from Atari and other manufacturers, creating the home game console market, which Atari came to dominate for several years with its iconic Atari 2600 console

In the video arcades, Atari ran into serious competition from the Japanese company Taito Corp., when Taito released the wildly-popular “Space Invaders” in 1978

Atari fired back, with the vector-graphics video game “Asteroids” in 1979

Also, before Atari became iconic, Bushnell and Dabny’s “Computer Space” even made a cameo appearance in the 1973 dystopic thriller “Soylent Green” as a rich person’s toy in a world suffering from ecological collapse, extreme poverty, and food shortages set in — no kidding — 2022