Space Race (video game) first game. After leaving Nutting Associates and founding Atari in May 1972, Bushnell spent a few days designing "Asteroid", but soon had to drop the project to focus on running the company. After the release of "Pong", Atari's first game, development resumed on the title in Spring 1973. Dabney has claimed credit for the game's final design, though "Pong" designer Allan Alcorn has stated that he and Bushnell may have been involved as well. "Asteroid", codenamed VP-2, was designed to be a racing game that would be simple to create to fulfill an earlier contract with Bally Midway; Atari had
Ted Dabney studied trade drafting, which led to him getting a job with the California Department of Transportation while still a teenager. He eventually got his high school diploma from San Mateo High School; Dabney credited a math teacher named Walker there that got him interested in the electronics and computing areas. He then had a summer position with a local surveyor company, but when the work dried up by the winter, he was let go, and he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Within his three years of the Corps he took courses on electronics, giving him an interest in