Space Race (video game)
Development of "Space Race" began soon after the founding of Atari in Summer 1972 under the name "Asteroid". Co-founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney had the initial idea for the game while developing the 1971 "Computer Space", the first arcade video game, but felt the more complicated "Computer Space" was a better 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 initially offered "Pong" during its development to fulfill the contract, but had been rejected. The company was also interested in producing a very different game from their previous success, as they felt that innovative design was what would separate them from their competitors, which they saw as flooding the market with "Pong" clones rather than making new video games.
Tank (video game)
The arcade game market is split into manufacturers, distributors, and operators; manufacturers like Atari sell game machines to distributors—who handle several types of electronic machines—who in turn sell them to the operators of locations. In the early 1970s, distributors bought games on an exclusive basis, meaning that only one distributor in each distribution region would carry products from a given arcade game manufacturer, restricting the manufacturer to only the operators that distributor sold to. Atari, in 1973 just over a year old and largely based on their hit first game "Pong", felt that as a smaller manufacturer this setup severely limited their ability to sell arcade games: they could only contract with a limited number of distributors, who would only buy a limited number of games per year. To work around this, Atari set up a secret subsidiary company in September 1973, Kee Games, which was intended to sell clones of Atari's games, in effect doubling their potential reach. Kee did have its own manufacturing equipment and therefore the ability to develop original titles, however, and after several clone games lead engineer Steve Bristow developed the idea for a new title. Bristow, who had previously worked with the Atari founders on "Computer Space", the first arcade video game, came up with the idea while thinking of how he could improve "Computer Space". His idea to correct the perceived shortcomings of the game were to replace its difficult to control rocket ships with more straightforward tanks, and to make it a two-player game instead of a single-player one.