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
Nolan Bushnell In 2012 he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software. Nolan is credited with Bushnell's Law, an aphorism about games "easy to learn and difficult to master" being rewarding. Bushnell enrolled at Utah State University in 1961 to study engineering and then later business. In 1964, he transferred to the University of Utah College of Engineering, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He was one of many computer science students of the 1960s who played the historic