PODCAST · leisure
The Ted Dabney Experience
by The Ted Dabney Experience
The Ted Dabney Experience. Intimate conversations with leading lights from the golden age of video arcade gaming. A podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander). Brought to you in association with The American Classic Arcade Museum (US) and Arcade Archive (UK).
Episodes
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TDE EP42 - Atari UK Cofounder Alistair Crooks
Despite lacking any knowledge whatsoever of the amusement industry, Kellogg’s sales manager Alistair Crooks and eccentric former RAF airman Phil Smith convinced a young Nolan Bushnell that they were the right men to introduce Atari’s Pong to the United Kingdom in 1973. Swiftly moving from…
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TDE EP41 - GCC Cofounder & Ms. Pac-Man Co-creator Doug Macrae
Doug Macrae founded General Computer Corporation in 1981 with Kevin Curran whilst still an MIT student and would go on to employ many other MIT students, including previous guests Steve Golson and Jonathan Hurd. We talk with Macrae at length about the disruptive business model and general…
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TDE EP40 - Atari Project Manager John Ray
John Ray joined Atari Inc in 1977 as a hardware engineer, learning the ropes with 1978’s Fire-Truck, arguably the first truly co-op arcade game and a distinctive arcade presence due in no small part to his analogue circuitry audio. Ray was also involved with the Atari-licensed versions of Namco’s...
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This is The Ted Dabney Experience
The Ted Dabney Experience is a podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander - A Journey to The Top of an Arcade Classic). We host in-depth conversations with the creative leading lights and supporting cast from the Golden Age of...
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TDE EP39 - Rob Quinn of Stern
Rob Quinn joined Stern just as the company was branching out from it's core pinball business to explore the brave new world of videogames. Rob talks about his involvement with the company's early hit, Berzerk, his experiments with laser disc technology and his personal misgivings about how the...
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TDE EP38 - Atari and Bally Midway Game Designer Mark Pierce
Mark Pierce was a game designer at Atari and Bally Midway. We talk to him about the protracted development of Escape From The Planet of The Robot Monsters, the axonometric, somewhat baroque B-movie arcade adventure, and the conversely swift creation of the tile-stacking puzzler classic, KLAX....
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TDE EP37 - Jersey Jack Pinball Founder Jack Guarnieri
From 1975 to present day, Jack Guarnieri has seen and done it all; from servicing mechanical pinball machines in the dive bars and laundrettes of Seventies New York, bearing first-hand witness to the inflation - and rapid deflation - of the video game bubble of popular lore, running his own...
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TDE EP36 - Strong Museum Assistant VP Jeremy Saucier
Jeremy Saucier is Assistant VP at The Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Jeremy talks to us about the history and evolution of the Strong Museum and its pedagogical remit - from American history and Industrialisation to a focus on play - and gives us a fascinating insight into the...
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TDE EP35 - Atari Inc Coin-Op Engineer Jeff Bell
Jeff Bell was a hardware engineer in Atari Inc’s coin-op division and officially the longest serving employee of the company; literally the last person to switch off the lights in 2004. Jeff walks us through his formative years learning the basics of electronics at his father’s desk, the...
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TDE EP34 - Atari Pong Creator Allan Alcorn
For this episode we speak with none other than Allan Alcorn, Atari employee number three after Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, and the engineer of Pong, one of the very first video arcade games.
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TDE EP33 - Atari Inc Designer and R&D Manager Roger Hector
Senior corporate executive, serial entrepreneur, automotive designer and fine artist. Roger Hector is not only a successful businessman but a bona fide creative polymath. A long time ago, Roger sharpened his pencils at Atari Inc, working alongside co-founder Nolan Bushnell and creative director...
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TDE EP32 - Eugene Jarvis - Part 2
Part 2: Eugene Jarvis cut his teeth in the Atari pinball division before going on to produce the groundbreaking Defender for Williams Electronics. Also for Williams (contracted as Vid Kids, his new company with Defender co-creator Larry DeMar) was Stargate, Robotron: 2084 and Blaster. Jarvis left...
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TDE EP32 - Eugene Jarvis - Part 1
Eugene Jarvis cut his teeth in the Atari pinball division before going on to produce the groundbreaking Defender for Williams Electronics. Also for Williams (contracted as Vid Kids, his new company with Defender co-creator Larry DeMar) was Stargate, Robotron: 2084 and Blaster. Jarvis left Vid…
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TDE EP31 - Arcade Britannia author Dr Alan Meades
Dr Alan Meades teaches the undergraduate and post-graduate game design courses at Canterbury Christ Church University and is the author of Arcade Britannia, published by MIT Press. After dedicating so many episodes of the show to the mythic American arcade of the late Seventies and early Eighties...
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TDE EP30 - Atari Engineer Dave Sherman
Dave Sherman joined Atari shortly prior to Nolan Bushnell’s departure and was at the company through its precipitous near-collapse and subsequent restructuring during the infamous market crash of ’83 and ’84. Sherman worked alongside Dave Theurer on iconic such as I, Robot and Missile Command…
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This is The Ted Dabney Experience
The Ted Dabney Experience is a podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander). We host long-form conversations with the leading lights and supporting cast from the Golden Age of coin-op video arcade gaming. Our guests have included...
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TDE EP29 - Crystal Castles programmer Franz Lanzinger
Franz Lanzinger programmed the singular Crystal Castles for Atari, Inc. Released in the summer of 1983 and housed within a typically eye-catching Atari cabinet, the game found modest success as a coin-op title and was adapted for numerous home platforms. Franz talks to us about being the person…
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TDE EP28 - Food Fight programmer Jonathan Hurd
Jonathan Hurd coded Food Fight at General Computer Corp for Atari. A decidedly ‘non-violent’ game amid a galaxy of shooters, Food Fight was GCC’s first title for a smart-thinking Atari after the infamous Super Missile Attack lawsuit was settled (for more on Super Missile Attack, listen to our...
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TDE EP27 - Bally Midway graphic artist Paul Niemeyer
In any video arcade, especially during the proverbial Golden Age of the Seventies and Eighties, it wasn’t always the games on screen that first caught the eye but the colourful, imposing, sometimes lurid cabinets that housed them. This was bona fide pop art for the coin-op kids of America and...
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TDE EP26 - Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day
We speak with Walter Day, the grandfather of e-sports and the inspiration for Wreck-it-Ralph’s avuncular arcade manager, Mr Litwack. Walter is the founder of the long-defunct but world-famous Twin Galaxies video arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, and the international scoreboard of the same name. Day waxes...
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TDE EP25 - Centuri coder Lee Feuling
Lee Feuling is a retired United States Airforce and American Airlines pilot who, once upon a time, was a coder for Centuri Video Games in Hialeah, Florida. Centuri was best known for its hugely popular licensed releases of Japanese titles such as Track & Field and Phoenix, but of far more…
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TDE EP24 - Death Race creator Howell Ivy
Howell Ivy is the creator of Exidy’s infamous Death Race. Released in 1976, this was the first arcade game to stir a moral panic over videogame violence in America, leading the company to hire round-the-clock security in response to many green-ink letters and phoned-in death threats. Exidy…
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TDE EP23 - Atari graphic designer Evelyn Seto
Evelyn Seto worked at Atari under creative director George Opperman on some of the company’s most iconic graphic material, including arcade cabinets such as Fire Truck and Soccer, a wealth of arcade game sell sheets and console packaging for the consumer division; not to mention the famous Atari...
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TDE EP22 - Atari Battlezone and S.T.U.N. Runner programmer Ed Rotberg
In accordance with Theurer’s Law - named after Missile Command and Tempest programmer Dave Theurer, which states that every programmer’s first game will be a relative failure - Ed Rotberg’s first game for Atari, Baseball, didn’t exactly score a home run. However his sophomore title, 1981’s...
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TDE CLIPS - EP01
Excerpts from our interviews with the gentlemen who created Gottlieb’s Golden Age Video Arcade titles Q*Bert, Mad Planets and Krull. Featuring Warren Davis, Jeff Lee, Matt Householder and David Thiel.
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This is The Ted Dabney Experience
The Ted Dabney Experience is a podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander - A Journey to The Top of an Arcade Classic). We host intimate conversations with the leading lights and supporting cast from the Golden Age of coin-op…
more -
TDE EP21 - Gravitar and Missile Command programmer Rich Adam
Rich Adam joined Atari in 1978, initially working on the company’s pinball games before being assigned the role of Junior Programmer on Dave Thuerer’s Missile Command. Rich went on to take the captain’s chair for the hard-as-nails Gravitar, arguably the pinnacle of Atari’s vector game output, and...
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TDE EP20 - Gottlieb, Atari and Epyx alumnus Matt Householder
Matt Householder co-designed Gottlieb’s underrated arcade adaptation of Peter Yates’s ill-fated Krull, before going on to join Atari’s consumer division to work on home adaptations of video arcade hits. With his partner Candi Strecker he went on to create and produce the critically acclaimed...
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TDE EP19 - Asteroids, Centipede and Gauntlet programmer Ed Logg
Ed Logg, AKA Super Duper Game Guy, is the programmer’s programmer. Cited by his contemporaries as one of the all-time greats, Ed designed and co-developed arcade smash hits such as Asteroids, Centipede, Millipede, Super Breakout and Gauntlet. In 2011, Logg was awarded a Pioneer Award by the…
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TDE EP18 - Former Atari VP Steve Calfee
Steve Calfee has rarely gone on record about his time at Atari. His managerial role at the company’s Coin-Op division saw him channel the work of well-known programmers such as Rich Adam, Dennis Koble, Dave Theurer and Howard Delman into Video Arcade smash hits such as Canyon Bomber, Space Duel…
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TDE EP17 - Pinball audio engineer and Gottlieb alumnus David Thiel
David Thiel is perhaps best known for his pinball audio work on titles such as Tron: Legacy, Alien, Dialed In, Avatar and Family Guy, but he was also responsible for everything aural on all the Golden Age Gottlieb classics (Q*Bert, Mad Planets, and Reactor to name but a few). From synth salesman…
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TDE EP16 - Art of Atari author Tim Lapetino
Tim Lapetino on the underrated yet enduring legacy of Atari creative director George Opperman, and behind the scenes on both The Art of Atari and the forthcoming Pac-Man: The Birth of an Icon.
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TDE EP15 - Atari Programmer Bob Flanagan
Honing his coding skills producing games for the Apple II, Bob Flanagan joined Atari in 1984. It was a difficult time for the company and the industry as a whole, yet Bob still managed to work on some of their best loved releases, including Paperboy, Marble Madness and Gauntlet. Bob tells us…
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TDE EP14 - Q*Bert co-creator Jeff Lee
Jeff Lee was the original video artist at D. Gottlieb and Company, designing the character Q*Bert and working on titles such as Krull, The Three Stooges and the late Kan Yabumoto’s seminal Mad Planets. Jeff talks to The Ted Dabney Experience about his days at Gottlieb (later Mylstar) and, most...
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TDE EP13 - Atari veteran Dennis Koble
Recruited by the company in 1976, Dennis Koble was one of Atari’s earliest coin-op game designers. Koble stayed with Atari for five years and was responsible for such notable titles as Avalanche, Sprint 2 and Dominos, before leaving to co-found Imagic. In 1984 Dennis would return to coin-op as...
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TDE EP11 - GCC’s Steve Golson (Ms. Pac-Man, Super Missile Attack)
The inimitable Steve Golson reminisces about his days evading Atari’s radar with GCC, subsequently being co-opted by the former for arcade classics such as the frantic Food Fight and the singular Quantum, and of course Crazy Otto (aka Midway’s Ms. Pac-Man).
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The Retro Asylum Interview
A brief introduction to The Ted Dabney Experience podcast. Originally released as a segment for the Retro Asylum Christmas Special episode, 2020.
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TDE EP10 - Rampage co-creator Brian Colin
We talk with Rampage co-creator Brian Colin about the early days at Bally Midway, applying his traditional animation know-how to the seminal Discs of Tron and meeting The Rock.
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TDE EP09 - Kevin Hayes of Atari Ireland
The Ted Dabney Experience podcast talks with Kevin Hayes, former Managing Director of Atari Ireland. If you played an Atari arcade game in Europe during the proverbial Golden Age of video games, including popular third-party licences such as Cinematronics’ Dragon’s Lair, it bore Kevin’s...
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TDE EP08 - The Pit co-designer Andy Walker
TDE Podcast takes you from the North East Yorkshire coastal town of Bridlington to Miami Beach with one of the very few Brits to have developed coin-op videogames for the American market during the Golden Age, Mr Andy Walker.
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TDE EP07 - Joust and Sinistar designer John Newcomer
An in-depth discussion with John Newcomer, designer and lead developer of one of the most unique and enduring arcade games of the Golden Age, Joust. John talks to The Ted Dabney Experience about his influences and inspirations, hits and misses, his design philosophy, videogame violence and…
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TDE EP06 - Doug Wismer of Canadian monitor manufacturer Electrohome
Electrohome supplied CRT monitors to all the big-name video arcade game manufacturers of the Golden Age, including Atari, Gremlin and Midway. Doug talks to us about how the company was saved from potential oblivion by arcade gaming; the pen, paper and handshake conception of Atari’s first vector...
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TDE EP05 - Mike Hally of Atari on Lucasfilm, Star Wars, lost classic Akka Arrh and Gravitar
Mike Hally devoted a quarter of a century to Atari, from the Sunnyvale years through Time Warner, literally turning off the lights when the company (that most of us would recognise) closed its doors for good in 2002. The Ted Dabney Experience talks with Mike about the gentleman’s arcade game,...
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TDE EP04 - Owen Rubin of Atari on Space Duel and Major Havoc
The Ted Dabney Experience Podcast talks to Space Duel designer Owen Rubin about the frontier days of videogame creation at Atari, the volatility of vector hardware, the original Boss Key, disco dancing, and Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell’s infamous pool parties.
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TDE EP03 - ACAM Founder and President Gary Vincent
The Ted Dabney Experience Podcast catches up with a long-time friend, ACAM’s Gary Vincent. We discuss Gary’s early days at Funspot, NH, his participation in Randy Fromm’s Arcade School, Funspot’s transition from electromechanical to video arcade and the establishment of ACAM. Gary shares his…
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TDE EP02 - Gorf and Robby Roto Developer Jamie Fenton
TDE sits down with Jamie Fenton, the developer of the original multi-game shooter, Gorf. We dig deep into Jamie’s early life and career with Dave Nutting Associates and Midway, covering transgender issues, Datsun sports cars, Larry Cuba of Star Wars SFX fame, the original US military application…
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TDE EP01 - Q*Bert Co-Creator Warren Davis
TDE talks to Q*Bert co-creator Warren Davis about the early days of videogame design at Gottlieb, lost Laserdisc classic Us Vs Them, his time at Williams Electronics working alongside Eugene Jarvis, and hanging out with Aerosmith.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Ted Dabney Experience. Intimate conversations with leading lights from the golden age of video arcade gaming. A podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander). Brought to you in association with The American Classic Arcade Museum (US) and Arcade Archive (UK).
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The Ted Dabney Experience
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How many episodes does The Ted Dabney Experience have?
The Ted Dabney Experience currently has 48 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Ted Dabney Experience about?
The Ted Dabney Experience. Intimate conversations with leading lights from the golden age of video arcade gaming. A podcast project by Richard May, Paul Drury (Retro Gamer magazine) and Tony Temple (author of Missile Commander). Brought to you in association with The American Classic Arcade Museum...
How often does The Ted Dabney Experience release new episodes?
The Ted Dabney Experience has 48 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Ted Dabney Experience?
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Who hosts The Ted Dabney Experience?
The Ted Dabney Experience is created and hosted by The Ted Dabney Experience.
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