# RePlay Magazine Podcast - Nolan Bushnell **Source:** Replay Magazine Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2026-05-09 **Duration:** 49m 10s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** Buzzsprout-19150519 --- ## Analysis Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and pioneer of the video game industry, discusses his entrepreneurial journey starting at age 8, his founding of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, the sale to Warner Communications in 1976, and his vision for AI's impact on the amusement industry. He reflects on key decisions, his relationship with Steve Jobs at Atari, and future ventures including a 'Museum of Games' concept. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972 and sold it to Warner Communications in 1976 for $15 million. — _Nolan Bushnell, in direct response to question about founding Atari and sale to Warner_ - [HIGH] Steve Jobs' only job outside of Apple was working at Atari as a technician, and he and Wozniak created Breakout for Bushnell. — _Nolan Bushnell describing Jobs' hiring at Atari and Breakout development_ - [HIGH] Jobs and Wozniak offered Bushnell a third of Apple Computer for $50,000, which he declined because he didn't think Jobs could be a good CEO. — _Nolan Bushnell recounting the Apple investment opportunity he turned down_ - [MEDIUM] AI can increase FEC (Family Entertainment Center) revenue by 15-20% through optimal game placement and data analysis. — _Nolan Bushnell explaining AI applications to amusement operators_ - [HIGH] Chuck E. Cheese was created in 1977 and was unaffected by the 1982-1983 arcade crash because it offered games for all demographics. — _Nolan Bushnell describing Chuck E. Cheese's inception and resilience during industry downturn_ - [MEDIUM] The 1982-1983 arcade crash was caused by the industry becoming too focused on violent punch/kick/fight games that attracted only 10% of the population instead of 60%. — _Nolan Bushnell analyzing causes of the arcade crash_ - [MEDIUM] Nolan Bushnell's youngest son made over $1 million last year publishing a game called Escape Academy. — _Nolan Bushnell discussing his son's business success_ - [MEDIUM] Bushnell sold ETAC to News Corp in 1989 for $25 million (according to ChatGPT reference in conversation). — _Randy Chilton citing ChatGPT information about ETAC sale_ - [MEDIUM] If Bushnell had taken a vacation instead of selling Atari to Warner, he likely wouldn't have sold the company. — _Nolan Bushnell reflecting on his decision to sell Atari, mentioning exhaustion as a factor_ - [MEDIUM] Bushnell is working on a 'Museum of Games' concept—a mall-location venue with classic and unusual games on an all-you-can-play admission model. — _Nolan Bushnell describing his current project_ ### Notable Quotes > "I think my entrepreneurship journey started when I was eight years old... In about an hour and a half, I'd made eight dollars in a world in which my allowance per week was 25 cents. And to say the least, I was hooked." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Early in interview > _Explains the origin of Bushnell's entrepreneurial drive and mindset_ > "The secret with kids is there's a lot of family time, but what is sparse is one-on-one. And so how I dealt with that is I would take one of them out for breakfast every Sunday." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Mid-interview > _Reveals Bushnell's parenting philosophy and intentionality about family time despite heavy work schedule_ > "Economically, it was wrong. I think I could have pulled through... But I was tired because Atari was a scramble. We never had enough capital." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, When discussing Atari sale > _Bushnell expresses regret about selling Atari, attributing decision primarily to exhaustion_ > "I didn't think Steve could ever be a good CEO. He was too brash and impulsive." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Discussing Steve Jobs at Atari > _Bushnell's candid assessment of Jobs at the time shows he was wrong about Jobs' potential as a CEO_ > "AI is really about crunching data... The AI will be able to crunch all that data and say, okay, you need more games that are structural or fantasy. Your game room is too old for your clientele." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, AI discussion section > _Concrete example of how Bushnell sees AI applying to amusement operators' decision-making_ > "Because it had, you know, it had games that everybody wanted and the demographic didn't change. It was family with kids... Chuck E. Cheese was kind of a mix between an arcade and an amusement park in Midway." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Discussing Chuck E. Cheese's success > _Explains why Chuck E. Cheese survived the 1983 crash—broad appeal and family demographic insulation_ > "I'm paying 100 grand a year to an engineer in Istanbul that if he were in Silicon Valley, I'd have to be paying a quarter of a million." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Remote work discussion > _Illustrates how remote work enables global talent acquisition at reduced cost_ > "I thought kids absolutely needed tokens because they were tangible... And even when Las Vegas went over to an all paper thing... I didn't think that would ever work for Chuck and Cheese. And it does." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Do-over discussion > _Bushnell acknowledges being wrong about a significant industry shift (tokens to cards)_ > "The part that I didn't see was how important the phone and games on the phone were going to be... Steve Jobs saw it coming." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Do-over discussion > _Bushnell admits missing the mobile gaming revolution that Jobs predicted_ > "Every year it got better because video takes data at a really, really high rate... In order to do it cheap, I had to do it on a raster scan. Because you could buy a raster scan TV for a hundred bucks. Which made it scalable." > — **Nolan Bushnell**, Technical discussion of early video games > _Explains the technical innovation that made affordable home arcade games feasible_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Nolan Bushnell | person | Founder of Atari, Chuck E. Cheese, and serial entrepreneur in amusement and gaming industry | | Steve Jobs | person | Worked at Atari as a technician before founding Apple; collaborated with Wozniak on Breakout game | | Steve Wozniak | person | Worked with Steve Jobs at Atari on Breakout game development | | Randy Chilton | person | Host of Replay Magazine Podcast, Chief Revenue Officer for National Entertainment Network | | Eddie Adlum | person | Owner and publisher of Replay Magazine, initial Hall of Fame inductee alongside Bushnell | | Atari | company | Video game company founded by Nolan Bushnell in 1972, sold to Warner Communications in 1976 | | Warner Communications | company | Acquired Atari in 1976 for $15 million | | Chuck E. Cheese | company | Family Entertainment Center concept created by Nolan Bushnell in 1977 | | Apple Computer | company | Steve Jobs and Wozniak offered Bushnell a third stake for $50,000, which he declined | | ETAC | company | Precursor to modern GPS technology, founded by Bushnell, sold to News Corp in 1989 for $25 million | | Escape Academy | game | Game published by Nolan Bushnell's youngest son, generated over $1 million in revenue | | Pong | game | Early Atari game referenced in discussion of Bushnell's career | | Computer Space | game | Bushnell's first video game, licensed to Nutting in 1971 | | Breakout | game | Game created by Steve Jobs and Wozniak for Atari, described as a huge hit | | Space War | game | Early computer game from MIT that inspired Bushnell's vision for arcade video games | | Replay Magazine | organization | 50-year-old publication covering coin-op entertainment industry | | Activate | company | Museum-style gaming venue with 30-40 locations, cited as example of successful model | | Tyler Bushnell | person | Nolan's son involved in amusement business; mentioned as having polycade home gaming product | | Mike Markle | person | First president of Apple Computer, served as mentor to Steve Jobs | | Ingrid Adlum | person | Daughter of Eddie Adlum, worked with Nancy on podcast production | ### Signals - **[historical_signal]** Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972 and is credited as the father of the video game industry; his early experience at an amusement park at age 20 managing a $4 million summer business provided critical business training (confidence: high) — Bushnell's account of founding Atari, Computer Space, and his early management role at amusement park - **[business_signal]** Nolan Bushnell expressed regret about selling Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for $15 million, stating it was economically wrong and driven primarily by exhaustion rather than strategic necessity (confidence: high) — Bushnell: 'Economically, it was wrong. I think I could have pulled through... But I was tired because Atari was a scramble' - **[personnel_signal]** Steve Jobs' only non-Apple employment was at Atari as a technician under Nolan Bushnell, working with Wozniak on Breakout; Bushnell declined Jobs' offer to invest $50,000 for a third of Apple because he thought Jobs was too brash to be a good CEO (confidence: high) — Bushnell's detailed recounting of Jobs at Atari: 'he was hired as a technician... He and Woz did Breakout for me' - **[market_signal]** The 1982-1983 arcade crash was caused by industry consolidation around violent punch/kick/fight games that narrowed the market from 60% to 10% of the population, creating fragility when home console market collapsed (confidence: medium) — Bushnell's analysis: 'The punch hit fight games... were making a lot of money. But it was a very narrow group, maybe 10% of the population instead of 60%' - **[product_strategy]** Chuck E. Cheese's Family Entertainment Center model proved resilient during the 1982-1983 arcade crash because it maintained broad demographic appeal (families with kids) rather than specializing in narrow arcade audiences (confidence: high) — Bushnell: 'Chuck E. Cheese was not negatively affected at that time. Because it had... games that everybody wanted and the demographic didn't change. It was family with kids' - **[technology_signal]** AI can optimize amusement venue operations through data-driven game placement, demographic targeting, and inventory management, potentially increasing revenue 15-20% (confidence: medium) — Bushnell: 'I would be willing to bet that the proper use of AI in an FEC could change the revenue on the upside by 15 to 20 percent' - **[sentiment_shift]** Post-COVID recovery in amusement industry shifted from revenue problems to supply chain problems as pent-up demand for social gaming experiences exceeded expectations across operators, distributors, and manufacturers (confidence: high) — Randy Chilton: 'Every operator and distributor and manufacturer went from having a revenue problem to having a supply chain problem because it came back so fast' - **[design_philosophy]** Bushnell's design philosophy emphasizes broad appeal and accessibility (generalized games attracting generalized consumers) over niche specialization, which proved more resilient to market shifts (confidence: medium) — Bushnell: 'generalized games attracted generalized consumers... The punch kick fight games came along that were violent and complex... took it from being in every person's game where we had as many women playing games as men' - **[innovation_signal]** Bushnell's key innovation was using affordable raster-scan TV monitors instead of vector monitors to scale video game production, making arcade games economically viable (confidence: high) — Bushnell: 'In order to do it cheap, I had to do it on a raster scan. Because you could buy a raster scan TV for a hundred bucks. Which made it scalable' - **[venue_signal]** Emerging venue model combining museum-style attractions with all-you-can-play gaming on paid admission (exemplified by Activate with 30-40 locations), representing growth area in experiential entertainment (confidence: medium) — Bushnell discussing 'Museum of Games' concept and citing Activate as successful 30-40 location model - **[sentiment_shift]** Bushnell acknowledges he failed to anticipate the impact of mobile gaming and smartphones on the industry, crediting Steve Jobs with seeing that trend earlier (confidence: medium) — Bushnell: 'The part that I didn't see was how important the phone and games on the phone were going to be... Steve Jobs saw it coming' - **[operational_signal]** Shift from physical tokens to card-based systems in family entertainment centers proved successful contrary to Bushnell's initial skepticism, with kids preferring cards to tangible tokens (confidence: high) — Bushnell: 'I thought kids absolutely needed tokens because they were tangible... when Las Vegas went over to an all paper thing... I didn't think that would ever work for Chuck and Cheese. And it does' --- ## Transcript Welcome to Replay Magazine's podcast where we'll dive into the legends and interesting stories within the world of what we call coin-op entertainment. That's games and amusement machines you find in arcades, fun centers, bars, restaurants, and beyond. Replay has covered this business for 50 years and is joining forces with industry veteran and former association president Randy Chilton. He is chief revenue officer for National Entertainment Network owned by Japanese amusement giant Kittleton Jenda. And now here's Randy and this month's Replay Podcast. So hi, everybody. Welcome to this month's Replay Magazine Podcast. Today, we have the unbelievable honor of visiting with Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, the father of the video game, and so many other accomplishments throughout his 50 years of 50 years plus of. His entrepreneurial spirit is remarkable. He spends quite a bit of time talking about it. He's just getting started as far as I can tell with visions on how AI can impact our industry. And he's got some great stories along the way, including Steve Jobs had one job that wasn't an apple and it was working for Nolan Bushnell. I did not know that. So he created Chuck E. Cheese, a few other companies along the way, about 15 to 20 of them to be exact, and he's still going strong. So we're so appreciative of him to carve out an hour to visit with me, and I hope you enjoy today's podcast with Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari. Welcome to the Replay Magazine podcast. And today we have the unbelievable honor to be visiting with Nolan Bushnell. And unless you've been living under a rock for 50 years, you've heard of him and his accomplishments. So, Nolan, welcome. Good to be here. Always fun. I've been reading Replay for probably 50 years. Probably as long as it's been around. Well, we got some feedback from Mr. Adlin, the owner and publisher, and apparently you were very good for business back in the day. Well, we could go over your accomplishments here, but we'd be on this podcast for the rest of the day. So my question is this. At a very young age, you're an engineer. You grew up in Utah. You were in Utah State for a while, if I have that right. And at some point along the line, you really, you know, you developed, you were working on Pong, you developed Atari, and then you went on to be what I can only explain as a serial entrepreneur. At what point was this path of yours apparent to you? At what age? How did this all start? How did you do this? Your accomplishments are very rare. Well, you know, there was always this statement, are entrepreneurs made or born? And I've tried to ask myself that question and I'm not sure, but I think my entrepreneurship journey started when I was eight years old. And at dinner one night, my mother said, we've got too many strawberries, I don't know what we're going to do with them. We had a garden out in back and we always kind of grew vegetables and strawberries and stuff. And the very next day I accompanied her to the grocery store and I noticed in the produce section that they had baskets of strawberries for 50 cents. So I went home, got all the old baskets out of the garage and what have you, picked the strawberries, filled them, and sold them for 50 cents door to door. In about an hour and a half, I'd made eight dollars in a world in which my allowance per week was 25 cents. And to say the least, I was hooked. You made some money at eight years old and the rest is history. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. Yeah. And then literally, I always, from that point on, I always had some kind of a side hustle. You know, call it a gig. And, you know, I think that when you look at the AI that's going on right now, everybody says that the gig economy is what's going to happen in the future, much more than corporate America giving you a job. Yeah, that's a great segue because you've been such a visionary and you're such an entrepreneur and you've done so many things. You know, I'm jumping ahead of the script, but you brought it up. AI is going to change things more than we know. And for this conversation, you've done so many public interviews and podcasts and whatnot. But this is going to be watched by mostly people that replay a magazine. So you're talking to your amusement operators, manufacturers, distributors for the most part. Your name probably will, I mean, there might be like 500 people see this, which is funny because your podcasts show up in the tens of thousands every day. So it's, you know, all podcasts are not the same. The question is, are they the right people? And, you know, that's kind of the question. So if I were to give advice to amusement operators, I would say they're probably more immune than you may think from disruption. Because the amusement operator either is part of an FEC, street routes are not what they used to be, they're still distributed vending, not so much of distributed amusement. You know, the home game really, really decimated the coin-op. As soon as you could buy a home game that was equivalent to what you could do in the arcades, the arcades were slowly kind of shuffled aside. My son, however, does polycade. I don't know. I think he's had a couple of ads on replay. I mean, he's got this home version of some of the old Atari classics and why not classics? Like a couple of nights ago, I was playing Dig Dug for a couple of hours. I don't know if you remember Dig Dug. It was a Namco game that was stupid in concept but fun to play. Anyway. Is that Brent you're referencing? Oh, Tyler. Tyler is. Oh, Tyler. Oh, Tyler is. Okay. You have eight children, right? Yes, I do. Three girls, five boys. And all the boys are in some kind of thing with the amusement business. You know, my youngest son made over a million dollars last year publishing a game called Escape Academy. Really? Yeah. Yeah, it's a good game. Well, I wonder where they get that from. Well, they actually said, you know, Dad, when we decided what we wanted to do for a living, it had to be something in amusement because we learned more over the dinner table than most kids had in their whole life. So whenever you have an advantage, go for it. As I was reading up, preparing for this discussion, it impressed me that although you're a guy that worked unbelievable number of hours and traveled all over the world, you had a very interesting way to remain a good family man. And you were very intentional about the time you spent with your kids and were, like you said, at the dinner table. I believe you traveled with them internationally quite a bit. Tell me a little bit about that. How did you work all that in? The secret with kids is there's a lot of family time, but what is sparse is one-on-one. And so how I dealt with that is I would take one of them out for breakfast every Sunday, and they'd all know whose turn it was. And at that time, I would choose a place that was a little weird and at least a half an hour away. And so the car was kind of talk time. And then the weird place was adventure time. You know, like I used to go out to the warp and have a breakfast place on Sunday morning where all the fishermen were coming in or the Lawrence Hall of Science. And, you know, we had several universities around. And so I would kind of use that. And then I would take my kids on a business trip. And the rule was that when they were 10, they could go overnight with me domestically. When they were 12, they could go overnight Europe. And at 14, they got to go to Asia with me. And, you know, there's kind of these fun little things. I was taking my kids, one of my sons to school one day and he had had a friend who had sleeped over. And the friend asked him, I said, what was the best day of your life? And my son said, oh, that's easy. That was when I was in Tokyo with my dad. Not surprised. That's pretty remarkable that you were so intentional about doing that with their kids. I bet all eight of them would give a similar answer to that question. We're all still really close now. For example, last year we did Christmas. And though they've got families of their own now, we all went to Barcelona, Spain. My wife rented a big house that had about 12 bedrooms. And we just had a weekend, a week in Barcelona that was just outside of Barcelona. And it was great fun. Oh, I bet it was. Games and charades and dupe puzzles, all kinds of stuff. I only have two kids, but I applaud you for figuring out just the logistics of how to get eight people when they're all busy and they're all working like, okay, family, we're all eight. There's not only one person that said, you can't make it dead. No, sound like you got them all there. Yeah. Good for you. So I'm still. They know if they don't come, we'll talk about them. That's pretty good. So I'm still fascinated on the buildup from your eight-year-old experience. And you lost your dad at a young age at 15. And I think you were kind of thrust into a leadership role pretty abruptly there I love to hear more about that and that impact in your career Well I had two younger sisters and an older sister And I knew that my mom had a little bit of a payout from insurance Ryan Policky. But I felt that any money that I took from the family, I'd be taken away from my sisters. And so I decided I was going to be financially independent and was actually. And I think again, that was a part of my entrepreneurial role. You know, I did this thing in college called the Campus Company. I was making some serious bucks. I was putting myself through college, driving a Mercedes 190 SL sports car. You know, it was big. And I did it by doing the Campus Splatter. And that was a great big piece of light cardboard. And I put a calendar of events in the middle of it and then sell advertising all around the edge. And the economics were I'd sell about $4,000 worth of ads around and it cost me $500 to print and I'd distribute them free to the kids at the beginning of class. I did a couple of years of each quarter. And first I did it for one university and then I did it for four. So I was making more money at the campus company than I made when I first graduated in electrical engineering. Oh my goodness. I mean, those are kind of crazy stories. But even though I was making all that money, I decided that I needed to keep myself out of harm's way. Because summers in Utah, you could, you know, go out and chase girls and take them to dinner and spend a lot of money. So I decided I needed a nighttime job to keep myself out of trouble. And that's where I got a job at the amusement park. Because I could get that all these sales done before. And the music park was really more to keep me occupied. But most of my friends, several of my friends worked at the music park, but I'd always considered it been kind of a sucker game because they paid a dollar an hour, you know, and, you know, that was, I thought, slave wages. But I found out that if you made quota, you got a buck and a quarter an hour. And then everything over quota, you got 10%. And I was a good salesman. And so I started making some serious buck there as well. And that's where I really learned the coin-operated game business because after two years, they made me manager of the department. So I was, I call it my MBA, that at 20 years old, I was managing a department of 150 kids, maintaining labor percentages and merchandise percentages and scheduling and hiring and training and all that. And my boss was a tough guy, but he was a good mentor about running business. And if I look at it, I was actually running a department that did about $4 million a summer. So that was a pretty good sized business that I was running, a division, if you would. And fast forward to today, that's probably more like a $50 million business. At 20 years old. So that was a fortuitous thing. And then when I was at the university, I saw a game called Space War, which was one of the first things that they did on it. When I started, computers were just all punch cards and printouts. They didn't have video screens. But then the PDP-1 came along and it had a converted radar monitor. And some guys from MIT programmed a game called Space War. I mean, I played that thing incessantly. We'd break into the computer lab at midnight and play until four in the morning. Not great for homework, but I decided that I said, boy, if I had this in my arcades at the amusement park and had a coin slot on it, people would put money in. But then you put 25 cents for three minutes into a million dollar computer and the math doesn't work. Yeah. So, but, followed away. And then, there's this theory in what you want to do. Whenever there's a change agent, you want to get next to the change agent. And so with AI, you don't know all the things that AI is going to disrupt. But if you really understand AI better than anybody else, you'll be the first to see the changes and be able to capitalize on them. Well, I felt the same way in the 70s when I graduated from the University of Utah. I decided that the change agent was semiconductors and there was only one place in the world to be and that was Silicon Valley. And so when I graduated, I packed up my wife. I was married then. My wife, my car, and we went to Sonata Valley and set up shop. So let's go back to AI and the amusement industry. We all know it's going to change it remarkably over the next years, but I can't really connect the dots. I'm an AI user, but I ask it, what's the Carl Weathers tomorrow? I mean, I'm not asking it the hard questions here. How is this going to impact the amusement industry as we know it today going forward? AI is really about crunching data. And so what does the amusement park, what does the amusement field know? And what's their database? Well, they have locations and then they have income in various places and placement. Like in an FEC, you can change the revenue of something by where you place a game. You'll have a slightly different clientele demographically, age-wise, you know, gender-wise, and certain games you'll be able to optimize based on the data. The AI will be able to crunch all that data and say, okay, you need more games that are structural or fantasy. Your game room is too old for your clientele. You need to make simpler, shorter games because a lot of your money is coming from kids that are not as big as adults. You've got six games that are not returning their capital on investment as well as it should. Trade them out. Mm-hmm. You could even say, do things like put in the data of what the used market is, and then it will alert you when the right time to slough something out. I would be willing to bet that the proper use of AI in an FEC could change the revenue on the upside by 15 to 20 percent. And that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. I mean, does that make sense to you? Well, when you explain it, it makes perfect sense. But that hadn't been something I was thinking about. But you're right. It'll just tell you anything. So you're talking about placement and driving revenue in the family entertainment centers and how it can help you make better decisions. So I hope I bet that's a popular part of this podcast. I think you'll help a lot of people out just by talking about that. Cool. I want to go back to one question I had as I was doing my research. So you founded Atari in 1972. The stories are legendary. I'm not going to make you go back and retell that whole story. Although if you want to throw in a Steve Jobs anecdote or two, that would be fine. But you sold it to Warner Communications in 1976. As you look back on that four-year run and the sale to Warner Communications, was that the right move at the time? Should you have held on to it? Should you have sold it earlier? How do you look at that time period in your life and the decisions you made regarding Atari? Economically, it was wrong. I think I could have pulled through. The introduction of the VCS, the cartridge programmable home game, needed more capital than I had. But I think I could have skinned it. I wouldn't have optimized it, but I think I could have survived it. And of course, it turned into a billion dollar business and the war screwed it up. And basically, I'd like to say it wasn't homicide, it was suicide. In 1983, it basically went dead and passed the leadership of the industry to the Japanese. And I don't think I would have made that mistake. Now, climbing on the other side on Back to the Future, what the sale did for me was kind of, I've often said I would have not sold if I had just taken a little bit of time off. But I was tired because Atari was a scramble. We never had enough capital. And so I was always chasing cash flow. And the sale to Warner allowed me to just relax a little bit and to fix my personal life. And so I had gone through what I call the Atari divorce. And so when I sold, all of a sudden it gave me time. And that's when I was able to woo and wed my current wife. She makes it, she gets angry when I say my current wife. I can help you with that. But anyway and so I got married again in 1977 So it was just a year after the sale Because I kind of you know I was more ready to have a home life as well as a work life Challenge of an entrepreneur. You were just tired, and that really kind of was a major factor in your sales of Warner. Yeah. You said in one of your interviews, if you would have just taken a vacation, you probably wouldn't have sold it. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, when you're offered, one part of it was 15 million bucks. And when you're kind of a hayseed from Utah, 15 million, say, I don't need any more money than that. I'm good. Especially back then. I mean, that's... Exactly. It's a lot of money in today's money. There's a lot of money back then for sure. But you went on to, well, I want to pause there a minute and continue talking about Atari because you can't talk about your story without the fact that Steve Jobs had one job in his life other than Apple and it was working for you. How did that come about? My attitude was always that you wanted to create a company that people wanted to work for. And we did that with Atari. And Jobs came and in the typical Jobs fashion said, you know, I'm not leaving until you hire me. And he was hired. We were looking for technicians at the time. And Jobs wasn't a good engineer. Was was. But I didn't know that at the time. But he was hired as a technician. He was a good technician. And I got to know him and I got to know Woz and he became kind of an important part. He and Woz did Breakout for me, which was a huge hit. And of course, the story is they offered me a third of Apple computer for $50,000 that I turned down. And I actually think that that was a good thing for them because the guy who did put the money in was Mike Markle who became the first president. And he was the mentor that Steve needed. I turned down because I didn't think Steve could ever be a good CEO. He was too brash and impulsive. Have you done the math what that decision could have been for you? It would have played out the same way, but I'm not sure it would have, you know? Right. So, put my operator hat on here. You created Atari and Pong was out there, and then you followed with a variety of different games. And as an operator, we certainly benefited from that period of time. And then 1982 and 1983 came along and it all just kind of went downhill in a hurry. So you talk about that in a lot of your podcasts. I lived through it as an operator in Kansas. And I'd love to – was that just totally driven by the proliferation of the home video games or were there other factors in play? It's actually an interesting question. My gut says that the 83 crash was just sort of everybody pushed a little bit too hard. It was also the thing that the business had become a lot more singular. Like what happened is generalized games attracted generalized consumers. And then the punch kick fight games came along that were violent and complex and they had the continuation feature. That did two things. That took it from being in every person's game where we had as many women playing games as men. The punch hit fight games tend to be male, tend to be young, and tend to be intense. So the people who had the punch hit fight games were making a lot of money. But it was a very narrow group, maybe 10% of the population instead of 60. And those people were intense and they tended to be on the home side, a significant part. And so when the home business kind of imploded, their revenue stream was diverted away and the whole business crashed. But it was because it had hollowed out and became a fragile, the coin-op side became fragile. Now, you might notice that Chuck E. Cheese was not negatively affected at that time. Because it had, you know, it had games that everybody wanted and the demographic didn't change. It was family with kids. And you started Chuck E. Cheese in 1977. Correct. Probably also the fact that the consumer experience was unique in Chuck E. Cheese with all the interactive games and the animation combination with the food. Yeah, Chuck E. Cheese was kind of a mix between an arcade and an amusement park in Midway. We had skee balls and what have you, you know. Chuck E. Cheese, you invented the FEC with Chuck E. Cheese. Is that a fair statement? I think so, actually. Yeah. Are you surprised with the popular? You know, I should take that back a little bit. I was contemporary with Dave and Buster's. Right. But they had a slightly different model and were growing at a much slower rate than Chuck E. did. Are you surprised with how that model really continues to evolve even today? I mean, family fund centers are, you know, in the right place with the right equipment. Exactly. Diversified are more popular than ever, even today. Well, I think that that continues to be the case. In fact, I'm kind of working on a thing right now. I'm calling the Museum of Games. And I think that there's a new thing going on. And what I'm planning to do is get a mall location, fill it up with some classic games and some weird games and what have you, and just pay one price, all you can play. You can stay as long as you want. Because there's an interesting thing about the museum business right now. It's actually kind of one of those growth factors where you get 10,000 feet, fill it up with weird shit, and charge an advanced mission. And there's actually a very, very, very good one called Activate. I don't know if they have one in your area, but there's one here in LA and I think they've got 30 or 40 of them around the state. Mm-hmm. But it's got a very, very, very good gaming environment. It's a physicality. And then we have VR, which is coming all around, which is not going on, but it's games reimagined in some ways. Right. So, will people always be gaming of sorts? Yeah, I think so. We just have to figure out what the new thing to dazzle in. We all learned coming out of COVID that humans' desire to socialize with other humans is greater than I think most of us knew. Would you agree with that? Mm-hmm. No question. We were all locked up for a while, and when they got the GO sign to go back out, they came back out in droves. Every operator and distributor and manufacturer went from having a revenue problem to having a supply chain problem because it came back so fast. It softened up a little bit, but thank goodness. It's interesting. COVID was a singularity. Like, the world changed after COVID. And like, before COVID, I was getting on airplanes all the time. Now I almost never do. For business, we're doing this, we're doing, you know, Zoom and all that. You go through downtown sections and remote working is a very important part. We have some places like San Francisco where the downtown area has a 60 percent vacancy rate. You know, and so we have whole sectors of the economy built out that's not necessary. I have one company that I'm working with right now, but my CEO is in Los Angeles. My CFO is in Istanbul. My CMO is in Stockholm, Sweden. That takes remote working to a next level. I know, but they're all really good at what they do. And like I'm paying 100 grand a year to a engineer in Istanbul that if he were in Silicon Valley, I'd have to be paying a quarter of a million. And he's happy as a pig in shit. If it's the dollar versus the drop-mood or the real, I don't remember what there is, but the Turkey economy is inflationary as heck and the dollar just goes, you know, he's living like a king. Well, tell me what, you know, you are certainly young at heart and are full of energy and can tell that you've, you know, you're far from done here. What's next for Nolan Bushnell? What are you going to do over the next five, ten years? Well, I think that on my buckle list, I've got a couple of companies, like I'm saying, I'm doing these museum kind of things. But I'm also planning to live in Italy for about six months, just kind of to hang out. And I think I'm going to, I continue to do speeches, you know, somehow they love me in Brazil. So I go to the Brazil game convention every year and give them ideas One of the questions we always ask you know we had a lot of people on this podcast that have achieved so much over their careers and really changed the industry But if you look back over it, is there a decision, is there a time in your life where you'd say, man, I would have done that differently? What's your do-over in your career? I think it's impossible to be in this business and not think about do-overs. And a lot of times, I was so wrong on so many things. I thought kids absolutely needed tokens because they were tangible and what have you. And even when Las Vegas went over to an all paper thing for their sawing machines, I didn't think that would ever work for Chuck and Cheese. And it does. Mm-hmm. Which was really surprising to me. It was a big shift for sure. Especially when you had the machines dispensing all the tickets and that seemed to be such a part of the experience. That's just on your card. Kids don't care. They prefer the card. Right. Okay. Anything else come to mind? I think that the part that I didn't see was how important the phone and games on the phone were going to be. Right. Didn't see it coming. Steve Jobs saw it coming. That's unbelievable. You know, you see a guy pandering on the street corner and he's stopping every couple of minutes to check his phone. I mean, everybody has. Yeah. Everybody has a phone. So you've been recognized by BAFTA. You were an initial Hall of Fame inductee into the Amusement Industry Hall of Fame back in the day. Did I get that correct? Correct. I think you went in with Eddie Adlum and a couple of other guys. Absolutely. And he specifically said, oh, I don't know if you saw his, we talked to him a couple of months ago, but he said, Nolan Bushnell was very good for subscriptions and to thank you for providing him a lifestyle he didn't anticipate. Because you brought all these people into the industry making video games, they all subscribed to Replay Magazine. So he said, be sure and thank Nolan. Well, thank Eddie because he's always been a friend and, you know, I got to know him and his family a little bit. He has a beautiful daughter. I forget what her name was. Is he still involved at all? I believe so. Yes. Yeah. Ingrid. Yep. Yeah. Ingrid. I don't know if you spent East Oddgrass said to tell you hello as well. She worked with Nancy to put this together. Her and I kind of do this together. She helps me along. When I look over the companies that you started and sold and moved on, it's just quite amazing. Your buy video story, which was a precursor to Amazon, before Amazon, you were Amazon before it even existed. Is that a good way to describe that? Yeah. Well, see, the problem, I saw online shopping as being something that was important. The problem is that at that time, the Internet was just at the beginning. And so the idea of broadband Internet wasn't there. It was just 300 bauden modems. Right. You know, when it takes a day and a half to download a picture, you're not going to have Amazon very well. Good point. Then you had a company called ETAC, which was the precursor to the modern GPS, so all of us that use GPS, thank you for that. I actually made a lot of money on that. I sold that. I think I sold that for a couple million bucks. Well, ChatGPT says you sold to News Corp in 1989 for $25 million. Yeah. What if you hadn't created the video game? Somebody else would have come along and done that? Or how do you think that would have played out? Well, I often believe that what I did, the technology that I created, was before the microprocessor. And I believe that the microprocessors got to be good enough about 68 that somebody would have done a video game in 68. So I believe that the technology I did, which was kind of unique and, you know, it was kind of out of the box thinking, let it start in 71 with computer space and then 72 with Atari. You know, my first game was Computer Space. That was when I licensed to Nutting. And I think that it's highly probable that the video game wouldn't have started before 78. Because just because of the advent of the technology would have made it more apparent. Every year it got better because video takes data at a really, really high rate. And the first games that were being played on a computer were actually vector monitors, which consume data at a much slower rate than raster scan. But in order to do it cheap, I had to do it on a raster scan. Because you could buy a raster scan TV for a hundred bucks. Which made it scalable. Yeah. You tried to sell it. Do I have the story right when you came up with the idea for Atari and the Pong? You had a hard time taking it to market. You went to a few places and then said, to heck with it, we're just going to build our own. Yeah, but you know, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Oh, very true. Very true. Slowly but surely, I was able to build the company, build the capability. In four years, we had an 80% market share. Now that's not easy to do because I did it without capital. So, you know, and, but I was, I think I had an advantage that I played business like a game. I was, I was always, you know, I was a 2100 ranked amateur chess player at the time. And chess teaches you to think ahead, to anticipate moves and counter moves. And if you apply that to business pretty soon, and if the other guy isn't, you can always beat them. You don't have to buy much, just a little bit every day. You get a little bit stronger, they get a little bit weaker. I think that's great. Great observation, great advice for all of us. I'll go home and practice on my chess game. One thing that I'm very proud of is that I think I created the ethos of Silicon Valley that made it as successful as it was. And that ethos was focus on outcome, not process. And so we started out kind of having a dress down Friday and then we had dress down anytime. And then we said, we're going to treat everybody by like adults. And we're not going to have time clocks. And we don't care when you come. We don't care if you come to work. The only thing that matters is outcomes. If you want to work from home, achieve the outcome, go ahead. And I believe that that ethos followed jobs to Apple. And I think that the people that saw the success of Atari and the success of Apple copied it to where I believe it's a big part of the ethos of Silicon Valley today. Certainly seems to be the case. So you're the reason we have a foosball table in the break room. Yeah, exactly. Anything you want to say to your faithful replay readers before we give you back your day? Yeah, just guys, you know, keep reading. Replay always has some fun stuff. And believe it or not, there's some gossip in there, too, which is always fun because, you know, the corner business, unlike a lot of businesses, it has a sense of community. But a lot of businesses don't have. And I think that's special. Well, it's true. When you look at why I wonder if anybody's been doing this for 30 or 40 or 50 years in the industry, that's actually a pretty long list. It is. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, Nolan, this has been an honor. I thank you for taking the time out of your schedule and just sharing with us some of your experience, some of your wisdom. And I thought it was just great. So I really appreciate your time and your comments. Well, we'll have some fun again. So probably ring me up again in a couple of years and I'll have some new ideas on AI. I know you will. Well, it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate your time. It'll be good. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. I got to give you one thing. Oh, good, good, good. This is my current book. Oh, your current book, Shaping the Future of Education. Yeah. I had written down both your books because you did a finding that next Steve Jobs is another one, right? Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about shaping the future of education. I want to hear about this. Well, it just is a, my rule is you can't complain about something unless you have a plan to fix it. And I just think that the education in the world, it's not just the U.S., is woefully inadequate and inefficient. And I've got a, it's, the book is formulaic as to how we fix it. So, enough said. And that's available on Amazon.com. I just saw it a little bit earlier. Good. Yeah. So I had to leave with one commercial anyway. Absolutely. Well, that's the least we can do for you giving us your time. Well, you take care and I hope to see trade shows or around or maybe we'll do a sequel. We'll see. Okay. Bye now. Thank you, sir. Bye-bye. Game over. Thank you. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v5)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-06-06 | Item ID: b87b1bc4-05b4-4bc1-8b1f-4f78bdf20ffa*