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.
Asteroids (video game)
A prototype of "Asteroids" was well received by several Atari staff and engineers, who would "wander between labs, passing comment and 
stopping to play as they went". Logg was often asked when he would be leaving by employees eager to play the prototype, so he created a second prototype specifically for staff to play. Atari went to Sacramento, California for testing, setting up prototypes of the game in local arcades to measure its potential success. The company also observed veteran players and younger players during focus group sessions at Atari itself. A group of old players familiar with "Spacewar!" struggled to maintain grip on the thrust button and requested a joystick, whereas younger players accustomed to "Space Invaders" noted they get no break in the game. Logg and other Atari engineers observed proceedings and documented comments in four pages.
"Asteroids" was released for the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family in 1981 and Atari 7800 in 1986. Released in 1981, the 2600 port was the first game to use bank switching, a technique developed by Carl Nielsen's group of engineers that increased available ROM space from 4 KB to 8 KB. Brad Stewart, the programmer tasked to work on the port, used bank switching to complete the game. A port for the Atari 5200, identical to the Atari 8-bit computer version, was in development in 1982, but was not published.