How apparently Chuck E. Cheese was founded to push Atari product on kids. ; )
Chuck E. Cheeseâs Pizza Time Theatre was founded by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, who sought to expand video-game arcades beyond adult locations like pool halls to family friendly venues.[2][3] His experience in the amusement park industry, and his fondness for Disneylandâs Country Bear Jamboree, influenced his concept for Pizza Time Theatre.[4][5] He has said, âIt was my pet project ⌠I chose pizza because of the wait time and the build scheduleâvery few components, and not too many ways to screw it up.â[6]
Also
When his first animatronic show was being assembled, Bushnell learned the costume he had bought for his main character, a coyote, was actually a rat, prompting him to suggest changing the name from âCoyote Pizzaâ to âRick Ratâs Pizzaâ. His marketing team believed this name would not be appealing to customers and proposed âChuck E. Cheeseâ instead. The company adopted the rat as their mascot.[7]
I heard Nolan Bushnell talk once. Very eccentric guy. I donât remember much of what he said anymore but I came away surprised at how little interest he had in talking about videogames, especially videogames in themselves as opposed to as an implement of business or entertainment.
To me, it explained a lot about why console games collapsed in the early 80s and then revived only thanks to the authentic enthusiasm still alive in Japan
Increasingly tendentious further things I think about from there:
- Steve Jobs worked at Atari for a year or two. Is it a coincidence that Apple also seems to despise games? First they refused to encourage them, then they unleashed a new form of income-maximizing ones
- Is the past prologue? Are predatory mobile games then likewise destined for a 1983-style crash? (No)
thatâs actually a great story, he basically Tom Sawyered Wozniak into making a more efficient finite state machine implementation of Arkanoid
yah, the Atari guys couldnât recruit Wozniak to work for them so they hire his best friend on the assumption that Jobs would take his work home and have Woz polish everything up for them. The general vibe was that everybody at Atari despised Jobs and the feeling was mutual but they got a few months of Wozniak doing Jobsâ job for him.
this has been my theory for a while. I think steve jobs hated games from working at atari
kinda funny how metroid fusion is the only one with mimic missile packs
I donât think very highly of much in MGS4 (narrative justification or otherwise) but I always liked how they justified bringing over the melee from 3 by saying that snake had previously renounced CQC but he was now breaking his vow
Is Crazy Taxi better with The Offspring tracks replaced by uh whatever slightly more bland tracks replaced them?
No way.
crazy taxi 1 and 2 and thps 1 and 2 are probably the only games enhanced by having licensed soundtracks
the offspring and bad religion tracks are inherent to the entire vibe, replacing them is criminal
I would like to say a big part of my enjoyment of Burnout Paradise was the licensed soundtrack
The best part of RoadKill was that only like 7 dadrock songs survived the post-apocalypse, so inevitably youâre going to turn the dial over to the 2 hours of Mad Max CarTalk talk radio that they recorded.
Having now tried the Steam Community mod that restores the original audio and puts in additional tracks from I think 2 and 3
uh I can say that I am a wuss and that music was doing my head in, Iâll stick with the bland old man stuff. I played the DC version back in the dayâmy memories of that music are better than the actuality blaring in my ears from the mod. I understand why people wanted it restored, but I guess itâs not really my thing after all.
i would argue that the offspring and bad religion are dadrock
They definitely are. All rock music becomes either Classic Rock or Kids Music with time, those definitely skew closer to the Classic Rock/Dad Music paradigm. Kids music includes Talking Heads, Devo, etc
I donât think I would add the CT2/CT3 music to 1, they work in 3, but if you want that just play 3 (it got a PC release in Europe and itâs pretty good!)