Pong Creator's Restaurant, Many Years In The Making, Finally Opens
from the slow-roasted dept
It's become nearly impossible to count all of the news stories over the past decade talking about Pong creator Nolan Bushnell and his plans to open a new video-game themed restaurant. Doing a quick search finds at least one article from 1999 that mentions his basic plans to build restaurants that are built on video games -- combining some of the concepts from his two previous "success" stories: Atari and Chuck E Cheese. However, every time we saw an article about Bushnell's uWink offering, it always described some future date when these restaurants would open. Back in 2005, there was actually a whole flurry of articles about his plans for such a restaurant -- often mentioning that he planned to open the restaurant towards the end of that year. However, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that any such restaurant opened, and today Katie Fehrenbacher at Gigaom is saying that the first such restaurant is finally opening, many, many, many years after it was originally planned. What's unclear what caused all those delays, and whether it represents more a problem of the idea (video games at your table) or the execution. Apparently, we'll find out soon enough.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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There are lots of people who spend the majority of their time playing video games, often not stopping while they eat.
This is simply taking that and moving it into a more 'social' environment. If, as was mentioned, this is done with good taste, it could be a great success.
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Might Work, if executed properly
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Dave and Busters...
And he may have created Chuck E. Cheese, but does he still hold onto it? If I remember correctly, the big Chuck went bankrupt quite a few years ago and virtually disappeared for a while...until it came back as a gaming destination instead of a birthday party place (which is how it was when I was a child...replete with annoying animatronic singing rodents). It's been rebranded to drain the wallets of parents everywhere by making it a regular destination for report-card celebrations and bribery to get kids to do their chores (Have you seen the ads they've put out lately?). Nolan may still own the franchise name, but it did go through some rough times in the late '80s and '90s.
Anyway out, my happy(ish) medium is Magic Mountain fun centers. The games are cheaper than D&B, but it's a little more family friendly (if you can put up with the cacaphony [sic] and the random kids running around everywhere).
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nasty sewer rat
To me, Chuck E. looks like a nasty sewer rat - not cute like the more famous rodent and his girl friend.
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