They christen the new company with the uncomfortable label Syzygy, an term from astronomy meaning the Earth, Moon and Sun in perfect alignment. "Designed by Syzygy" actually appeared on labels on Computer Space. But history thanks the roofing company that has already registered the name. So Bushnell picks a name from Go, a Japanese game he is fond of playing. Atari is the equivalent of "check" in the game..................after returning to Atari starts sneaking his good friend Steve Wozniak into the factory after hours for long playing marathons on the arcade machines. The first time Wozniak sees a PONG machine he is hooked, and designs a PONG clone himself that would put one of four questionable phrases up on the screen if a ball was missed, such as "DAMN IT" and "OH SHIT". He does provide a switch to turn off the swearing, however...............In 1980, Namco game designer Moru Iwatani is tired of the glut of shoot-em-ups littering the arcades. He wants to create an arcade game that looks more like a cartoon than a videogame, and appeals to women as well as men. His original design calls for an animated pizza with a missing wedge for a mouth running around a maze eating everything in sight. Technological restraints at the time, however, require a graphics scale-back to a simple, solid yellow circle. The large wedge of a mouth does remain, though, and the character and game is christened Puckman, from the Japanese phrase pakupaku, meaning to flap one's mouth open and close. .......... After changing the name to Pac-Man in order to discourage vandals from replacing the P with an F, Bally/Midway releases the game in North America.............It is this year when Fusajiro Yamauchi founds Nintendo Koppai in Kyoto, Japan. The name Nintendo roughly translates to "Work hard, but in the end it is in Heaven's Hands", and the company's products are lovingly
handcrafted Hanafunda playing cards made from the bark of mulberry trees. The cards are decorated by various symbols, which change depending on the region they're sold in. Hanafunda games constitute a popular pastime in Japan, and Yamauchi's cards are adopted by the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia, as their cards of choice when gambling. Their penchant for fresh cards every hand keep demand high..................Berzerk goes on to become the biggest arcade hit for Stern, selling upwards of 50,000 units in spite of its dodgy optical joystick that has to eventually be replaced by a Wico stick. Unfortunately, it also goes down in the history books as the first videogame to apparently kill a person. 18 year old Peter Burkowski is in Friar Tuck's Game Room in Calumet City, Ill. for about 15 minutes on Saturday April 3 1982, and puts his initials up twice on the high score list on the Berzerk machine there. He then turns to put a quarter into another machine and falls to the ground. He is dead within half an hour. The cause of death is a heart attack...........The apparent savior of the arcade market grows up as a born gearhead. While just a kid in California, Rick Dyer invents a cuckoo clock that not only talks the time, it spouts a plethora of famous quotes. Later he rigs his car with a computer which asks his dates by name their preferences of radio stations.