Early history of video games while it was commercially successful and made over US$1,000,000, it did not meet the high expectations of Nutting, who had expected to sell more than 1,500 units. Bushnell and Dabney immediately started work on another game, using the same television set design as "Computer Space", as well as founding their own company Atari, Inc. to back their projects. While initially this game was to be a driving game that Bushnell planned to design, their first employee, Allan Alcorn, took a prototype ping-pong game suggestion of Bushnell's and expanded on it to create a game the company immediately seized on. They
Nolan Bushnell During this time Bushnell was using large loans on his Pizza Time stock to fund Catalyst. By the end of 1983, Chuck E. Cheese was having serious financial problems. President and long-time friend Joe Keenan resigned that fall. Nolan tried to step back in, blaming the money problems on over-expansion, too much tweaking of the formula and saturation in local markets by the management team. He resigned in February 1984, when the Board of Directors rejected his proposed changes. Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theaters (now named after its famous mouse mascot) entered bankruptcy in the fall of 1984. ShowBiz