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Nolan Bushnell tells the fascinating story behind ShowBiz Pizza Theft of Chuck E. Cheese Concept


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@Professor, yeah.. I'm just sayin there's a really dedicated group of fans who still love Rock-afire Explosion and they'll gang up on you if you're a Chuck E. Cheese fan. Seriously. I've never felt more hate or vitriol come from a fanbase like that in my life until they tore me down. I can see them reacting to this video in negative ways. I'd like to think the gorilla and the rat can just get along!  :party:

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There are other versions of the story and Nolan skips past the part about him hemorrhaging CEC/PTT money into creating Sente, but Robert Brock being the largest CEC/PTT franchisee, going through the whole franchise process and then going AWOL at the last minute is absolutely true. Not just per Nolan's story, but Gene Landrum's as well as the courts.

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Wow, had no idea that was the case, I was just a snotty nose kid who loved show biz and was absolutely gutted when chuck e cheese took over the scene when I was living in St. Louis. But kids don't get whet business is all about. I have to say that today's Chuck e cheese is not as cool as it was back then. The ball pit, where you hang out when your out of tokens and try to find tokens that someone else lost in there.

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Wow, had no idea that was the case, I was just a snotty nose kid who loved show biz and was absolutely gutted when chuck e cheese took over the scene when I was living in St. Louis. But kids don't get whet business is all about. I have to say that today's Chuck e cheese is not as cool as it was back then. The ball pit, where you hang out when your out of tokens and try to find tokens that someone else lost in there.

I agree! In New Orleans, we had a couple of Pizza Time Theatres, but alot more Showbiz Pizza Place's. Of course, everyone favored SPP over PTT, as the PTT locations closed and it left us with only SPP's, but by 1989 the two brands merged together anyway.

 

The SPP in Algiers (West Bank New Orleans) that I went to all the time in the 80's, is still open today as a CEC!

Brian Matherne - owner/curator of "The MOST comprehensive list of Atari VCS/2600 homebrews ever compiled." http://tiny.cc/Atari2600Homebrew

author of "The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion" book series available on Amazon! www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne

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I've seen this video and I Think it's really interesting. The Brock story is totally true. In the merger, ShowBiz bought PTT, Inc. PTT Would have died if they didn't. Nolan's company never really survived. The Chuck E. Cheese name you see today is ShowBiz Pizza. The crash of '83 didn't really help either. He also fails to mention that Showbiz didn't actually own the Rock-afire so there was no way to keep them without buying the rights, to which the owner still keeps to this day, but they now owned the Chuck E. characters so they were kinda forced to use them.

 

In many people's eyes Showbiz was the more teenage and better place, and I Do think they did the right thing..Nolan should be happy about them since they kept his company alive. *shrugs*

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I see a few comments about how Nolan was wasting money on creating Sente.  Sente was a company originally called Videa which Nolan simply bought.  See my interviews with former Videa/Sente designers Howard Delman, Lee Actor, and Roger Hector for more info: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/interviews.html

 

What Nolan was really hemorrhaging money on was Axlon, and it was something that ultimately cost him everything, including his home.

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I lived in Texas as a young child and we had Show Biz and Chuck E Cheese. We always went to Show Biz, it was so much cooler! I still to this day can vividly remember how it looked and the felling I had being there! When I was 9 we moved to NJ which had no Show Biz, only Chuck E Cheese. It was not long after that Show Biz was bought and then crushed. I still have a Show Biz watch I got as a prize, the only thing I have left of those great childhood memories.

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 I still have a Show Biz watch I got as a prize, the only thing I have left of those great childhood memories.

Here's what I have left from Showbiz Pizza Place in my collection (along with a bag of SPP tokens).............

post-52-0-23859900-1492135008_thumb.jpg

post-52-0-10320200-1492135129_thumb.jpg

post-52-0-52997000-1492135163_thumb.jpg

post-52-0-54995500-1492135174_thumb.jpg

Brian Matherne - owner/curator of "The MOST comprehensive list of Atari VCS/2600 homebrews ever compiled." http://tiny.cc/Atari2600Homebrew

author of "The Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion" book series available on Amazon! www.amazon.com/author/brianmatherne

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On 2/6/2015 at 6:13 PM, The Professor said:

We updated the Atari Arcade page this week more detail on the history of Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater, including this GREAT video of Nolan Bushnell at Google, telling the fascinating story behind ShowBiz Pizza and the Chuck E. Cheese concept. More here: http://www.atari.io/atari/atari-arcade-games/#cec

http://youtu.be/Dq_V0Vh2tN4

FYI The video and account have been removed.

There's a picture of the original "coyote" costume in my interview with Jerry Donaldson:

http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/jerry_donaldson/interview_jerry_donaldson.html

 

interview_jerry_donaldson_11.jpg

Edited by Scott Stilphen
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On 2/19/2019 at 11:52 AM, Justin said:

YouTube killed my entire account in 2017. No warnings no strikes.

That's the main downside about some of the big sites including facebook and Youtube: It's near impossible to talk to a real person when you have problems or questions. At least when I have an ebay issue, I can call a real person.

The No Swear Gamer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChtJuo040EOCTVziObIgVcg

Host of The Atari 7800 Game by Game Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher and YouTube

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