The Aftermath

Of course, in retrospect, attempting to lay claim to the medium of video games is as ridiculous as trying to own music or literature. But Ralph Baer genuinely believed his patent applied to video games in general. Winning the case would establish Magnavox as a gatekeeper that every developer would have to go through, paying huge amounts of money to license out their technology. As court proceedings dragged on over years, things were actually leaning more and more in Baer’s favor. William Higinbotham and Slug Russell were asked to testify on the creation of Tennis For Two and Spacewar. Nolan Bushnell could deny it if he liked, but not only had he seen the Odyssey in action before Pong, he had signed his full name in the guestbook attesting that he had. The clincher came when the prosecution brought in a cabinet of Pong and opened it up. Dissected its circuitry for the court, they found the technology nearly identical to that of the Odyssey. With so much at stake, Atari needed to pull off a miracle to win the case. So what did they do? Well, they lost.
Judge John Grady finally called Ralph Baer’s patent for the Odyssey "the pioneering patent of the video game art," and ruled in his favor.
Magnavox won. And they kept winning, in every case they initiated over the years- which was a lot. They did become the gatekeeper of video games, and every major video game company- especially the ones making consoles- had to go through them. They lurked in the background, always settling for huge sums of money to license out patents until they eventually expired decades later. Nolan Bushnell thought of them as patent trolls, since exploiting patent law became their primary source of income. It’s not hard to see where he was coming from.
But it’s not like Bushnell didn’t get away with it in the end. To get out of the financial hole, he sold Atari to a huge media company, under whose leadership their status as a cultural icon was cemented.
Atari Japan continued to operate under Nakamura Manufacturing Company. In 1977, they entered the video game business, and officially shortened the company’s name from Nakamura Manufacturing Company to Namco.
Tomohiro Nishikado continued making video games in the following years. After Western Gun, there was the pioneering flight simulation game Interceptor. Not long after, he took the shooting gameplay of Western Gun and combined them with Breakout, a game similar to Clean Sweep, to create Space Invaders, which ushered in a new age of innovation in video games. It’s no exaggeration to say that Nishikado’s games were the biggest individual contribution in establishing Japan as a global source of video games.
Slug Russell stopped making games, but still plays them. Clash of Clans is one of his favorites.
Nolan Bushnell went off after the court case to pursue his pizza parlor dream from years prior, founding Pizza Time Theater, which later rebranded itself after its mascot, Chuck E. Cheese. Bushnell got extremely rich off the back of his ventures, enough to buy the extravagant Folger Mansion, where he raised several children with his wives.
He remains an active businessman and a prolific speaker, quick to take credit for the creation of Pong, for Atari, and for video games in general. Rarely does he acknowledge the role of others, especially Ralph Baer, whom he still hates; in 2010, he described him as “at most a pain in the ass.” He continues to capitalize on his association with Pong to sell blockchain projects and crypto scams.
Ralph Baer was never fond of Bushnell either. After the lawsuit, he got his revenge on Atari when he saw a cabinet of Atari’s Touch Me at a trade show. Believing the idea had potential outside the format of an arcade game, he created Simon, a conversion of the game in a handheld format electronic. Simon found immense popularity, vastly eclipsing that of the original Atari arcade game.
Baer fought for years to be recognized for his contributions to video game technology. In 2006, was awarded the National Medal of Technology by president Bush in honor of his work. He died in 2014, at the age of 92.
Al Alcorn left Atari not long after the new leadership came in. In 2008, he got a chance to play Table Tennis for the first time on an emulated replica of the Brown Box. Playing against Ralph Baer, he was able to beat the creator at his own game.
Ted Dabney made his best efforts to preserve his friendship with Nolan Bushnell. He created the automated ticket number system used at Chuck E. Cheese, and an electromechanical quiz game as well. He cut off involvement with Bushnell’s ventures after a dispute over $90,000, then leaving the video game industry for good.
Dabney watched the video game industry grow from a grocery store in northern California, which he managed with his wife until around 2006. He remembered watching his grandchildren play video games and telling them about how he’d helped invent them. But his grandchildren were confused: “because if I helped invent video games, why wasn't I more known, like Walt Disney or Steve Jobs?" In 2018, a group of seven from the Smithsonian Institute traveled to California to interview Dabney on his role in Atari’s founding. Dabney was taken aback at the scale of the operation; he genuinely never considered that so many people were interested in him and his work. Ted Dabney died two months later, at the age of 81.