“I like to describe myself as a leisure time technologist” – Nolan Bushnell
You’ve gotta love the BBC Archive—they always manage to tap straight into our nostalgia cortex! 🕹️✨
In this gem from 1981, we catch Nolan Bushnell, the mastermind behind Atari, dishing out insights on video games and whether they tap into our “animalistic nature” when it comes to violence in games. (Spoiler: he’s charmingly candid.). He also talks about the ground-breaking Pong, which was renamed to Ping in the UK due to the word ‘pong’ having a different meaning over the pond 😉
By this point, Nolan had already sold Atari to Warner Communications for a cool US$28 million, pocketing about US$15 million himself 💸—and he wasn’t slowing down. Instead, he pivoted to something even more wild: launching Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, where pizza met arcade games, pinball and animatronic mice ruled the stage. 🎤🍕
The best part? The clip shows both kids and adults completely caught up in the early ’80s arcade craze—a full-blown cultural moment brought to life by the guy who basically invented “fun” as a business model.
📼 Total time capsule. Total legend. Total vibes.
source: BBC Archive (Facebook)