RickR

Really sad news via Marty Goldberg on Facebook:

It is with great sadness I announced the passing of Atarian Regan Cheng on April 4th after a two year battle with cancer. Regan was 1/2 of the world's first video game industrial design team consisting of him and Pete Takaichi under the leadership of George Faraco. Joining in 1972 while both were still pursuing a degree from San Jose State University, the duo designed Pong-In-A-Barrel as their first project before moving on to work on the infamous Gotcha cabinet. and a slew of others. Ronald Wayne (who would later go on to co-found Apple) went on to manage them after George's departure and by 1975 they were crucial to Atari's coin cabinet designs helping carve out Atari's unique look and feel in the arcades and were joined by Clint Graham, Phil Kearney, and Carl Lepinne. Iconic looking games like Night Driver, Evel Knievel and more.

Back in those days everything was done by hand, no modern CAD or design software. As Regan recalled last year regarding the days when Atari used off the shelf TV's in it's arcade games: "I recall us design guys creating the card board bezels to custom fit to each new TV. Took a while to do. We would trace the final pattern and give to a die cutting shop to make production parts. What a kick. Now we would use 3D CAD and 3D print . It was a kick."

Also in 1975 Regan became involved in Atari's foray into consumer products with Home PONG. By the early 80s he had left the Coin Division and was responsible for helping craft the futuristic look of Atari's home offerings like the Atari 5200 and their XL line of computers and products like the Atari 2600s Star Raiders controller as well as the phone products in Atari's pioneering AtariTel division.

Leaving Atari in 1983, he continued to play a role in Silicon Valley going on to work for such companies as Sigen Corporation, NAMCO, Data East, Global VR and Google (in their Google Fiber group). Regan is survived by his son, sister Donna, and a brother.

All product photos courtesy of the Atari Museum. Read more about Regan's contributions in Atari Inc- Business Is Fun and Tim Lapetino's book Art of Atari.