History of video games market in 1978 with the Odyssey, while toy company Mattel released the Intellivision in 1979, which featured graphics superior to any of its competitors. After both Atari and Fairchild made a strong showing in 1977, the market hit a difficult patch in 1978 when retailers resisted building inventory, believing that the newly emerging electronic handheld market would displace video games. Atari, for example, manufactured 800,000 systems, but proved unable to sell more than 500,000 to retail. This helped precipitate a crisis at the company that saw co-founder and chairman Nolan Bushnell and president Joe Keenan forced out by Atari's parent
History of video games Sega Enterprises's "Periscope" (1967) and Chicago Coin's "Speedway" (1969) pioneered the adoption of elaborate visual displays and electronic sound effects in the amusement arcade. Consequently, when a recent engineering graduate from Utah with experience running coin-operated equipment named Nolan Bushnell first saw "Spacewar!" at SAIL in late 1969 or early 1970, he resolved to build a coin-operated version for public consumption. Enlisting the aid of an older and more experienced engineer named Ted Dabney, Bushnell built a variant of the game called "Computer Space" in which a single player-controlled spaceship dueled two hardware-controlled flying saucers. Released in late November or