Space Race (video game) screen while avoiding obstacles. Development of "Space Race" began in Summer 1972 under the name "Asteroid" by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, based on ideas by him and co-founder Ted Dabney. The final design was done by Dabney, possibly with assistance by Bushnell and "Pong" designer Allan Alcorn. The game was planned to be quick to create to fulfill an earlier contract with Bally Midway. The engineering and prototyping was done by Alcorn; after it was completed and the design given to Midway to be released as "Asteroid", Atari produced its own nearly identical version as "Space Race". Fifty "Space Race"
Galaxy Game were well into development and had gotten permission to place the machine at the Tresidder student union building at Stanford as a test site. It was then that they received a call from Nolan Bushnell, who had heard of their project and wanted to show them his similar project he was working on. Bushnell had also played "Spacewar" during the 1960s and wanted to make an arcade game version of it, but had gone in a different technological direction. He and Ted Dabney had initially started with a US$4,000 Data General Nova computer which they thought would be powerful enough