ANTIC Interview 71 - Nolan Bushnell, The Man

Hello, and welcome to a very special interview-only episode of Antic, the Atari 8-bit podcast. I am Randy Kindig, one of your hosts for this podcast. I say “special” because it’s not often that you get a chance to talk with an icon like the one we talk with today. Kevin Savetz and myself were given the chance to sit down, so to speak, with “Mr. Atari” Nolan Bushnell and spend a few minutes shooting the breeze. If you need any more introduction for this guest, then you’re probably listening to the wrong podcast. In fact, he’s one of those guys that can go by a single name “Nolan” and everyone in the Atari community knows who you’re talking about.

Before we get to the interview, I want to thank the Atari community on the AtariAge forums for suggesting questions for Nolan. When we put out a request for questions, who knew we would get such a large and varied response. Regrettably, we only had time for some of them. Many of you will recognize the questions that you submitted and we are very grateful for your help. I also want to thank Marty Goldberg for his suggestions and guidance as someone who has talked with Nolan in the past.

This interview was conducted on July 30, 2015.

Teaser Quotes:

“wouldn't it have been fun if Atari had owned the Internet?”

“Did you regret selling it? Every day of my life!”

“Ray Kassar? Oh, he was a disaster.”

“Warner didn't want to have anything to do with me. They felt that if I was back in and made a success of it it would make them look stupid.”