Happy Belated Birthday Nolan Bushnell

I feel bad for missing this the other day but on February 5th the founder of our industry (practically the entire video game industry – yeah I know aobut Ralph Baer but Nolan is the one who really got the ball rolling) celebrated his 65th birthday. Nolan Bushnell created the very first coin-operated video game with Computer Space which was a commercial flop but paved the way for the rest of the industry as he kept his dream alive and went on to create the smash hit PONG along with the first titan of the game industry, Atari which would later create some of the most memorable classics of all time along with some great consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Atari Lynx. These days Mr. Bushnell is keeping busy with his restaurant chain called uWink, which combines gaming with eating but in a more mature venue than Chuck E. Cheese (which he also created). Mr. Bushnell was actually born in my home state Utah, although I have never been to the city he was born in (Clearfield). I have been to Lagoon Amusement park however, where Nolan worked at the time that he first came up with the idea for coin-operated video games while he  was studying at a local university. Anyways, Happy birthday Mr. Bushnell!

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