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.
Gotcha (video game)
Development on "Gotcha" began in July 1973, as Atari's fourth game after "Pong", "Space Race", and "Pong Doubles". The company was interested in producing a very different game from their previous success of "Pong", 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. After the release of "Space Race", development immediately moved on to "Gotcha". The design of the game was done by Allan Alcorn, the designer of "Pong" and developer for "Space Race". Alcorn had the idea for the game from a defect he sometimes saw when testing "Pong" machines: if part of the circuit that converted scores to images on the screens was broken, then parts of the numbers would be scattered across the screen. Alcorn thought that combining that defect intentionally with a motion circuit could create dynamically changing mazes. A prototype design was developed by Steve Mayer of Cyan Engineering, which had recently become a semi-independent research and development subsidiary of Atari.
The cabinet for the game was designed by Atari's product designer, George Faraco. His designed featured a joystick for each player, which was encased in a pink dome that the player would rest their hands on to control the joysticks, meant to resemble breasts. Faraco later acknowledged that "they didn't have bumps on them or anything, but the way they were the size of grapefruits next to each other, you got the impression of what they were supposed to be." Atari's second engineer, Don Lange, who assisted with the game, has also stated that the design was intentional on the part of Faraco, who fellow Atari designer Regan Chang has claimed "had some really far out ideas". According to rumor, Faraco got the idea from a joke that joysticks resembled phalluses, and that Atari should make a game with female controls. Like Faraco's initial design for "Space Race", which was changed due to its expense after a few dozen units, the joysticks for "Gotcha" were changed to standard ones shortly into the production run prior to the October 11, 1973 release. The design did inspire the advertising flyer for the game, however, which features a man chasing a woman in a nightdress with the initial design of the cabinet behind them. The final cabinet stands over 5 feet tall and weighs nearly 200 pounds. The breast-like controllers reappeared in yellow in prototype versions of the 1974 "Touch Me" arcade game, but were not used in production.