Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy User Manual
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Trigger Happy
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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,