Chance to interview Atari's Bob Brown - Help!

[Hateshinai]

A little bit of background. I live in Malta, Europe where there is almost no interest in retro gaming. However a few of us got together and started a local forum about our hobby.

Today one of us (the founder of the site) met with some relatives from the States who are over for a few days more. Turns out than one of them is Bob Brown, who used to be an engineer at Atari back in the good old days and worked on the home prototype of Pong among other things.

They will meet again in the next few days so we have got a chance to ask him about his work at Atari and anything else really. The problem is that we have no idea what to ask specifically. So if any one has any questions to suggest please share them here. I will post the answers when I get them.

[dsheinem]

ask him if he'd like to be a guest on the Racketboy Podcast

[retrosportsgamer]

ask him if he'd like to be a guest on the Racketboy Podcast

LOL - I was thinking the same thing.

[sevin0seven]

does he likes being called "Bob" or "Robert"?

what is the best sequel to PONG?

who ended up dating "Darlene"?

[flojocabron]

here you go.....

Back then, were kids really into videogames?

Kids now are 100% into gaming, but kids back then, I'm sure had other hobbies.

Also there was the whole cost of the pong console. Were kids eager to get on the gaming bandwagon? Did parents buying pong for their kids do it as just a way to keep them busy? Or was it a cool piece of new technology that was an intersting conversation piece?

Videogaming in its infancy could be compared the the Tech boom of the late 90's. How did it feel for him to be in a new industry? Was it a chore? was it just for the paycheck? Or was he really into it, in trying to develop something new and never seen by the mass market?

[Hateshinai]

Thanks for the suggestions.

It turns out he has the first Atari VCS to ever come off the production line. Freaking awesome. I would love to see it but apparently he does not carry it around with him on holidays. Weird, I would...

He promised to sign my Atari 2600s.

[gtmtnbiker]

You might want to post over at atariage.com. I'm sure they'll have some good questions for you. There's a thread where Noland Bushnell answered questions for them.

[Hateshinai]

Here's what we got out of him:

http://www.retrogm.org/viewtopic.php?f= ... 2047#p2047