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.
Tank (video game)
"Tank" was designed by Steve Bristow, who had previously worked with the founders of Atari on "Computer Space", the first arcade video game, and was developed by Lyle Rains. It was created as part of Bristow's vision to move the company away from only producing copies of Atari's games into also developing original titles. The game's cabinet was designed by Peter Takaichi. In September 1974, Atari announced a merger with Kee, which went into effect a month after the release of the game. The game was commercially successful, selling over 10,000 units and buoying Atari's then-troubled finances. It led to a cocktail cabinet release of the game and to four sequels: "Tank II" (1974), "Tank III" (1975), "Tank 8" (1976), and "Ultra Tank" (1978). A dedicated console version of "Tank II" was announced in 1977 but cancelled later that year; the joysticks for the game, however, became the standard joystick controllers for the Atari 2600 (1977). Variations on the game were included in the Atari 2600 game "Combat", as well as in the Coleco Telstar game "Telstar Combat!", both in 1977.