The Ted Dabney Experience

TDE EP36 - Strong Museum Assistant VP Jeremy Saucier

Jeremy Saucier is Assistant VP at The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Jeremy talks to us about the history and evolution of the Strong Museum and its pedagogical remit - from American history and Industrialisation to a focus on play - and gives us a fascinating insight into the day-to-day management of a museum. With a doctoral degree in history and a degree in American Studies, Jeremy was a natural fit for his role at The Strong, with its extensive archive of original mater...

TDE EP35 - Atari Inc Coin-Op Engineer Jeff Bell

Jeff Bell was a hardware engineer in Atari Inc’s coin-op division and officially the longest serving employee of the company; literally the last person to switch off the lights in 2004. Jeff walks us through his formative years learning the basics of electronics at his father’s desk, the brotherhood of Atari Inc, suspected mob involvement in the early videogames industry and Nolan Bushnell’s Bermuda shorts.

TDE EP34 - Atari Pong Creator Allan Alcorn

For this episode we speak with none other than Allan Alcorn, Atari employee number three after Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, and the engineer of Pong, one of the very first video arcade games.

TDE EP33 - Atari Inc Designer and R&D Manager Roger Hector

Senior corporate executive, serial entrepreneur, automotive designer and fine artist. Roger Hector is not only a successful businessman but a bona fide creative polymath. A long time ago, Roger sharpened his pencils at Atari Inc, working alongside co-founder Nolan Bushnell and creative director George Opperman on a vast range of videogame projects. Hector became R&D manager at Atari, before leaving to co-found his own games company, Videa, with Howard Delman and Ed Rotberg, programmer of Atar...

TDE EP32 - Eugene Jarvis - Part 2

Part 2: Eugene Jarvis cut his teeth in the Atari pinball division before going on to produce the groundbreaking Defender for Williams Electronics. Also for Williams (contracted as Vid Kids, his new company with Defender co-creator Larry DeMar) was Stargate, Robotron: 2084 and Blaster. Jarvis left Vid Kids in 1984 to attend Stanford University where he gained an MBA in 1986. He then returned to Williams to design the OTT run and gun title Narc (programmed with George Petro) and, with Mark Tur...

TDE EP32 - Eugene Jarvis - Part 1

Eugene Jarvis cut his teeth in the Atari pinball division before going on to produce the groundbreaking Defender for Williams Electronics. Also for Williams (contracted as Vid Kids, his new company with Defender co-creator Larry DeMar) was Stargate, Robotron: 2084 and Blaster. Jarvis left Vid Kids in 1984 to attend Stanford University where he gained an MBA in 1986. He then returned to Williams to design the OTT run and gun title Narc (programmed by George Petro) and, with Mark Turmell, Robot...

TDE EP31 - Arcade Britannia author Dr Alan Meades

Dr Alan Meades teaches the undergraduate and post-graduate game design courses at Canterbury Christ Church University and is the author of Arcade Britannia, published by MIT Press. After dedicating so many episodes of the show to the mythic American arcade of the late Seventies and early Eighties (in some ways perhaps more a figment of our collective imagination than we might care to admit) it was wonderful having Alan provide a much wider historical context of the amusement arcade, actually ...

TDE EP30 - Atari Engineer Dave Sherman

Dave Sherman joined Atari shortly prior to Nolan Bushnell’s departure and was at the company through its precipitous near-collapse and subsequent restructuring during the infamous market crash of ’83 and ’84. Sherman worked alongside Dave Theurer on iconic such as I, Robot and Missile Command, and shares many an anecdote about those early days, including soundly beating Bushnell at his own predilection, the strategy board game, Go. After Atari, Dave engineered a dual-purpose CAD system, gener...

TDE EP29 - Crystal Castles programmer Franz Lanzinger

Franz Lanzinger programmed the singular Crystal Castles for Atari, Inc. Released in the summer of 1983 and housed within a typically eye-catching Atari cabinet, the game found modest success as a coin-op title and was adapted for numerous home platforms. Franz talks to us about being the person to establish the long-overdue display of creator credits in video arcade games, meeting avid arcade gamer Steven Spielberg during the development of Atari’s ill-fated Gremlins arcade game, and then qui...

TDE EP28 - Food Fight programmer Jonathan Hurd

Jonathan Hurd coded Food Fight at General Computer Corp for Atari. A decidedly ‘non-violent’ game amid a galaxy of shooters, Food Fight was GCC’s first title for a smart-thinking Atari after the infamous Super Missile Attack lawsuit was settled (for more on Super Missile Attack, listen to our interview with GCC’s Steve Golson).

TDE EP27 - Bally Midway graphic artist Paul Niemeyer

In any video arcade, especially during the proverbial Golden Age of the Seventies and Eighties, it wasn’t always the games on screen that first caught the eye but the colourful, imposing, sometimes lurid cabinets that housed them. This was bona fide pop art for the coin-op kids of America and beyond. Paul Niemeyer started his career at developer Bally Midway during the early Eighties, working on such titles as Ms. Pac-Man, Tapper and Spy Hunter. He also had a hand in creating such impressive...

TDE EP26 - Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day

We speak with Walter Day, the grandfather of e-sports and the inspiration for Wreck-it-Ralph’s avuncular arcade manager, Mr Litwack. Walter is the founder of the long-defunct but world-famous Twin Galaxies video arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, and the international scoreboard of the same name. Day waxes lyrical about the trials and tribulations of running an arcade during the Golden Age of electronic gaming, the films Chasing Ghosts and King of Kong, his brief stint as an oil futures trader and, of ...

TDE EP25 - Centuri coder Lee Feuling

Lee Feuling is a retired United States Airforce and American Airlines pilot who, once upon a time, was a coder for Centuri Video Games in Hialeah, Florida. Centuri was best known for its hugely popular licensed releases of Japanese titles such as Track & Field and Phoenix, but of far more interest to TDE listeners is Tim Stryker’s vector shooter, Aztarac, and for an even deeper cut, the unreleased Grabber Goose (another Stryker vector title); not to mention Feuling’s very own, also unreleased...

TDE EP24 - Death Race creator Howell Ivy

Howell Ivy is the creator of Exidy’s infamous Death Race. Released in 1976, this was the first arcade game to stir a moral panic over videogame violence in America, leading the company to hire round-the-clock security in response to many green-ink letters and phoned-in death threats. Exidy followed Death Race with the relatively innocuous but very successful Circus; Venture, arguably the spiritual forerunner to Atari’s Gauntlet, and then back to controversy with the genuinely gruesome light g...

TDE EP23 - Atari graphic designer Evelyn Seto

Evelyn Seto worked at Atari under creative director George Opperman on some of the company’s most iconic graphic material, including arcade cabinets such as Fire Truck and Soccer, a wealth of arcade game sell sheets and console packaging for the consumer division; not to mention the famous Atari ‘Fuji’ logo. Evelyn’s long and storied career also saw her employed by industry giants HP and Apple, and Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell at his post-Atari toy/tech ventures AG Bear and Androbot. With ...

TDE EP22 - Atari Battlezone and S.T.U.N. Runner programmer Ed Rotberg

In accordance with Theurer’s Law - named after Missile Command and Tempest programmer Dave Theurer, which states that every programmer’s first game will be a relative failure - Ed Rotberg’s first game for Atari, Baseball, didn’t exactly score a home run. However his sophomore title, 1981’s Battlezone, with its distinctive green XY monitor graphics and unique periscope-adorned cabinet is rightly regarded as one of Atari’s finest releases of the coin-op videogame Golden Age. You’ll also learn a...

TDE CLIPS - EP01

Excerpts from our interviews with the gentlemen who created Gottlieb’s Golden Age Video Arcade titles Q*Bert, Mad Planets and Krull. Featuring Warren Davis, Jeff Lee, Matt Householder and David Thiel.

This is The Ted Dabney Experience

The Ted Dabney Experience is a podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander - A Journey to The Top of an Arcade Classic). We host intimate conversations with the leading lights and supporting cast from the Golden Age of coin-op Video Arcade gaming. Our guests have included Warren Davis and Jeff Lee (Q*Bert), Mike Hally (Star Wars), Ed Logg (Asteroids, Centipede), Jamie Fenton (Gorf), Owen Rubin (Space Duel, Major Havoc), Carol ...

TDE EP21 - Gravitar and Missile Command programmer Rich Adam

Rich Adam joined Atari in 1978, initially working on the company’s pinball games before being assigned the role of Junior Programmer on Dave Thuerer’s Missile Command. Rich went on to take the captain’s chair for the hard-as-nails Gravitar, arguably the pinnacle of Atari’s vector game output, and the game for which he is most well known. Talking to Rich was a real treat. He was by turns amusingly candid and quietly philosophical, and Paul was finally able to take further notes for The Officia...

TDE EP20 - Gottlieb, Atari and Epyx alumnus Matt Householder

Matt Householder co-designed Gottlieb’s underrated arcade adaptation of Peter Yates’s ill-fated Krull, before going on to join Atari’s consumer division to work on home adaptations of video arcade hits. With his partner Candi Strecker he went on to create and produce the critically acclaimed California Games (and much more) for Epyx. We chat with Matt about programming in the Seventies, video poker, high-voltage electrocution, Tim Skelly and Komedy Krull.

TDE EP19 - Asteroids, Centipede and Gauntlet programmer Ed Logg

Ed Logg, AKA Super Duper Game Guy, is the programmer’s programmer. Cited by his contemporaries as one of the all-time greats, Ed designed and co-developed arcade smash hits such as Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Super Breakout and Gauntlet. In 2011, Logg was awarded a Pioneer Award by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences in recognition of his groundbreaking videogame work.

TDE EP18 - Former Atari VP Steve Calfee

Steve Calfee has rarely gone on record about his time at Atari. His managerial role at the company’s Coin-Op division saw him channel the work of well-known programmers such as Rich Adam, Dennis Koble, Dave Theurer and Howard Delman into Video Arcade smash hits such as Canyon Bomber, Space Duel and Missile Command.

TDE EP17 - Pinball audio engineer and Gottlieb alumnus David Thiel

David Thiel is perhaps best known for his pinball audio work on titles such as Tron: Legacy, Alien, Dialed In, Avatar and Family Guy, but he was also responsible for everything aural on all the Golden Age Gottlieb classics (Q*Bert, Mad Planets, and Reactor to name but a few). From synth salesman to local rock star to Gottlieb and beyond (Commodore 64 and SID chip fans take note), David continues to produce outstanding interactive audio to this day.

TDE EP17 - Pinball audio engineer and Gottlieb alumni David Thiel

David Thiel is perhaps best known for his pinball audio work on titles such as Tron: Legacy, Alien, Dialed In, Avatar and Family Guy, but he was also responsible for everything aural on all the Golden Age Gottlieb classics (Q*Bert, Mad Planets, and Reactor to name but a few). From synth salesman to local rock star to Gottlieb and beyond (Commodore 64 and SID chip fans take note), David continues to produce outstanding interactive audio to this day.

TDE EP16 - Art of Atari author Tim Lapetino

Tim Lapetino on the underrated yet enduring legacy of Atari creative director George Opperman, and behind the scenes on both The Art of Atari and the forthcoming Pac-Man: The Birth of an Icon.

TDE EP15 - Atari Programmer Bob Flanagan

Honing his coding skills producing games for the Apple II, Bob Flanagan joined Atari in 1984. It was a difficult time for the company and the industry as a whole, yet Bob still managed to work on some of their best loved releases, including Paperboy, Marble Madness and Gauntlet. Bob tells us about collaborating with the brilliant but demanding Mark Cerny, having Ed Logg as a mentor and his experience of designing the swashbuckling Skull & Crossbones.

TDE EP14 - Q*Bert co-creator Jeff Lee

Jeff Lee was the original video artist at D. Gottlieb and Company, designing the character Q*Bert and working on titles such as Krull, The Three Stooges and the late Kan Yabumoto’s seminal Mad Planets. Jeff talks to The Ted Dabney Experience about his days at Gottlieb (later Mylstar) and, most importantly, the origin of Q*Bert’s vestigial limb.

The Ted Dabney Experience

Conversations with Golden Age video arcade greats. A podcast project by Richard May, Tony Temple (The Arcade Blogger) and Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine).

TDE EP13 - Atari veteran Dennis Koble

Recruited by the company in 1976, Dennis Koble was one of Atari’s earliest coin-op game designers. Koble stayed with Atari for five years and was responsible for such notable titles as Avalanche, Sprint 2 and Dominos, before leaving to co-found Imagic. In 1984 Dennis would return to coin-op as Director of Software for Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell’s Sente. At no point did he sit in a hot tub.

TDE EP12 - Atari market researcher Carol Kantor

TDE EP11 - GCC’s Steve Golson (Ms. Pac-Man, Super Missile Attack)

The inimitable Steve Golson reminisces about his days evading Atari’s radar with GCC, subsequently being co-opted by the former for arcade classics such as the frantic Food Fight and the singular Quantum, and of course Crazy Otto (aka Midway’s Ms. Pac-Man).

The Retro Asylum Interview

A brief introduction to The Ted Dabney Experience podcast. Originally released as a segment for the Retro Asylum Christmas Special episode, 2020.

An Introduction to The Ted Dabney Experience

A brief introduction to The Ted Dabney Experience podcast. Originally released as a segment for the Retro Asylum Christmas Special episode, 2020.

TDE EP10 - Rampage co-creator Brian Colin

We talk with Rampage co-creator Brian Colin about the early days at Bally Midway, applying his traditional animation know-how to the seminal Discs of Tron and meeting The Rock.

TDE EP09 - Kevin Hayes of Atari Ireland

The Ted Dabney Experience podcast talks with Kevin Hayes, former Managing Director of Atari Ireland. If you played an Atari arcade game in Europe during the proverbial Golden Age of video games, including popular third-party licences such as Cinematronics’ Dragon’s Lair, it bore Kevin’s fingerprints. We also discuss goat slaughter, littering and smoking the reefer.

TDE EP08 - The Pit co-designer Andy Walker

TDE Podcast takes you from the North East Yorkshire coastal town of Bridlington to Miami Beach with one of the very few Brits to have developed coin-op videogames for the American market during the Golden Age, Mr Andy Walker.

TDE EP07 - Joust and Sinistar designer John Newcomer

An in-depth discussion with John Newcomer, designer and lead developer of one of the most unique and enduring arcade games of the Golden Age, Joust. John talks to The Ted Dabney Experience about his influences and inspirations, hits and misses, his design philosophy, videogame violence and working with Eugene Jarvis, Warren Davis and the late, great Python Anghelo at Williams Electronics. And rubber chickens.

TDE EP06 - Doug Wismer of Canadian monitor manufacturer Electrohome

Electrohome supplied CRT monitors to all the big-name video arcade game manufacturers of the Golden Age, including Atari, Gremlin and Midway. Doug talks to us about how the company was saved from potential oblivion by arcade gaming; the pen, paper and handshake conception of Atari’s first vector monitor (over a pinball machine in Chuck E. Cheese) and the finer details of doing business with an early-Eighties JVC. Naturally, Paul asks about hot tubs at Atari.

TDE EP05 - Mike Hally of Atari on Lucasfilm, Star Wars, lost classic Akka Arrh and Gravitar

Mike Hally devoted a quarter of a century to Atari, from the Sunnyvale years through Time Warner, literally turning off the lights when the company (that most of us would recognise) closed its doors for good in 2002. The Ted Dabney Experience talks with Mike about the gentleman’s arcade game, Gravitar, lost classic Akka Arrh, shooting aliens on toilets and of course Atari’s seminal coin-op title, Star Wars.

TDE EP05 - Mike Hally of Atari on Lucasfilm and Star Wars, lost classic Akka Arrh and the gentleman’s arcade game, Gravitar.

Mike Hally devoted a quarter of a century to Atari, from the Sunnyvale years through Time Warner, literally turning off the lights when the company (that most of us would recognise) closed its doors for good in 2002. The Ted Dabney Experience talks with Mike about the gentleman’s arcade game, Gravitar, lost classic Akka Arrh, shooting aliens on toilets and of course Atari’s seminal coin-op title, Star Wars.

TDE EP04 - Owen Rubin of Atari on Space Duel, Major Havoc and Nolan Bushnell’s pool parties.

The Ted Dabney Experience Podcast talks to Space Duel designer Owen Rubin about the frontier days of videogame creation at Atari, the volatility of vector hardware, the original Boss Key, disco dancing, and Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell’s infamous pool parties.

TDE EP04 - Owen Rubin of Atari on Space Duel and Major Havoc

The Ted Dabney Experience Podcast talks to Space Duel designer Owen Rubin about the frontier days of videogame creation at Atari, the volatility of vector hardware, the original Boss Key, disco dancing, and Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell’s infamous pool parties.

TDE EP03 Gary Vincent

The Ted Dabney Experience Podcast catches up with a long-time friend, ACAM’s Gary Vincent. We discuss Gary’s early days at Funspot, NH, his participation in Randy Fromm’s Arcade School, Funspot’s transition from electromechanical to video arcade and the establishment of ACAM. Gary shares his views on repairing ageing CRT monitors, The King of Kong and its continued legacy, the Covid-19 lockdown and the future of The American Classic Arcade Museum.

TDE EP03 - ACAM Founder and President Gary Vincent

The Ted Dabney Experience Podcast catches up with a long-time friend, ACAM’s Gary Vincent. We discuss Gary’s early days at Funspot, NH, his participation in Randy Fromm’s Arcade School, Funspot’s transition from electromechanical to video arcade and the establishment of ACAM. Gary shares his views on repairing ageing CRT monitors, The King of Kong and its continued legacy, the Covid-19 lockdown and the future of The American Classic Arcade Museum.

TDE EP02 Jamie Fenton

TDE sits down with Jamie Fenton, the developer of the original multi-game shooter, Gorf. We dig deep into Jamie’s early life and career with Dave Nutting Associates and Midway, covering transgender issues, Datsun sports cars, Larry Cuba of Star Wars SFX fame, the original US military application of the Gorf flight stick, the ill-fated Robby Roto, and the fascinating (yet ultimately aborted) development of Ms.Gorf.

TDE EP02 - Gorf and Robby Roto Developer Jamie Fenton

TDE sits down with Jamie Fenton, the developer of the original multi-game shooter, Gorf. We dig deep into Jamie’s early life and career with Dave Nutting Associates and Midway, covering transgender issues, Datsun sports cars, Larry Cuba of Star Wars SFX fame, the original US military application of the Gorf flight stick, the ill-fated Robby Roto, and the fascinating (yet ultimately aborted) development of Ms.Gorf.

TDE EP01 - Q*Bert Co-Creator Warren Davis

TDE talks to Q*Bert co-creator Warren Davis about the early days of videogame design at Gottlieb, lost Laserdisc classic Us Vs Them, his time at Williams Electronics working alongside Eugene Jarvis, and hanging out with Aerosmith.

TDE EP01 Warren Davis

TDE talks to Q*Bert co-creator Warren Davis about the early days of videogame design at Gottlieb, lost Laserdisc classic Us Vs Them, his time at Williams Electronics working alongside Eugene Jarvis, and hanging out with Aerosmith.