Budge says he became interested in computers while obtaining a PhD at UC Berkeley. He purchased an Apple II and began writing games. He enjoyed it so much that he dropped out of school and became a game programmer. Budge's first game was a "Pong" clone, called "Penny Arcade", which he wrote using his own custom graphics routines. He traded the completed game to Apple Computer for a Centronics printer. California Pacific published a collection of four of Budge's Apple II games in 1980 as "Bill Budge's Space Album".