Atari
In 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded a small engineering company, Syzygy Engineering, that designed and built "Computer Space", the world's first commercially available arcade video game, for Nutting Associates. On June 27, 1972, the two incorporated Atari, Inc. and soon hired Al Alcorn as their first design engineer. Bushnell asked Alcorn to produce an arcade version of the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis game, which would be named Pong. While Bushnell incorporated Atari in June 1972, Syzygy Company was never formally incorporated. Before Atari's incorporation, Bushnell considered various terms from the game Go, eventually choosing "atari", referencing a position in the game when a group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent. Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27, 1972.
In 1973, Atari secretly spawned a competitor called Kee Games, headed by Nolan's next door neighbor Joe Keenan, to circumvent pinball distributors' insistence on exclusive distribution deals; both Atari and Kee could market virtually the same game to different distributors, each getting an "exclusive" deal. Joe Keenan's management of the subsidiary led to him being promoted president of Atari that same year.
Gran Trak 10
Atari reported a loss of $500,000 for the 1974 fiscal year, roughly as much as the previous year's profits, with "Gran Trak" as one of the major causes. This led Atari into deep financial problems, leaving part of "Gran Trak"s legacy being "the game that nearly put Atari out of business". In September 1974, Atari announced plans to merge with its subsidiary Kee Games; Kee's final game "Tank", released in November 1974, was a commercial success, however, and is credited with buoying the finances of the newly merged Atari at a critical time for the company. The "Gran Trak 10" game itself, after its problems were resolved, was considered a success, and Atari released multiple versions of it: a clone version titled "Formula K" was released through Kee Games for different distributors around July 1974, and Atari produced a small cabinet version in late in the year titled "Trak 10". According to Ralph H. Baer, "Formula K" sold "6,000" units. A two-player version titled "Gran Trak 20" was released in August, along with its own clone version from Kee Games titled "Twin Racer" and its own small cabinet version, "Trak 20". Baer estimates that "Gran Trak 20" sold 4,500 units. Atari produced numerous other racing arcade games in the same style as "Gran Trak", including "Le Mans" (1976), "Sprint 2" (1976), "Super Sprint" (1986), and "Badlands" (1989). "Gran Trak 10" was the first arcade car racing video game and the first game to use a steering wheel, and is known as the "grandfather of car-based racing games", though a simple racing game, "Wipeout", had been released in 1972 for the Magnavox Odyssey home video game console and a spaceship drag racing arcade game, "Space Race", had been released by Atari in 1973.