Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

microprocessor. Videogames could now be just as clever with much smaller, cheaper brains.

Back in 1965, an engineering student at the University of Utah called Nolan Bushnell had Spacewar on his computer, and like the other techies Bushnell played it obsessively. He began to wonder whether people might actually pay to play videogames in an amusement park, but given the size and expense of computers, it was a mere pipe dream at the time. By 1970, however, thanks to the microchip, the project had become commercially feasible, and Bushnell joined pinball company Nutting Associates to develop a mass- market version of Spacewar. In 1971, 1,500 units of Computer Space, the first arcade game, were produced. The project bombed.

So much for the future of entertainment. Computer Space was just too complicated for the videogame virgins of the general public. What the hell was it for? Pinball, fine—it’s immediately obvious what to do: there’s two flipper buttons, you light a cigarette and get on with it. But this intimidating machine, with its reams of instructions and its bizarre, bulbous casing, like something out of Barbarella—it was just weird. Bushnell learned his lesson. He would have to make a videogame that anyone could just walk up to and play,

42