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.
Adventure (Atari 2600)
"Adventure" received mostly positive reviews at the time of its release and has continued to be viewed positively in the decades since, often named as one of the industry's most influential titles. It is considered the first action-adventure and console fantasy game, and inspired other titles in the genres. More than one million cartridges of "Adventure" were sold, and the game has been included in numerous Atari 2600 game collections for modern computer hardware. The game's prototype code was used as the basis for the 1979 "Superman" game, and a planned sequel eventually formed the basis for the "Swordquest" games. The Easter egg concept pioneered by the game has transcended video games and entered popular culture.