October 1976: Warner buys Atari from Nolan Bushnell for $28 million dollars
In 1972, Nolan Bushnell, an engineer from a California-based company called Ampex, and one his fellow engineers, Ted Dabney, founded Atari. Between 1972 and 1976, the early electronic game market rose quickly, giving rise to classic entertainments such as Pong and Breakout. Bushnell and his associates poured time money into Atari, but nothing at the time could save video games from the “fad” label.
October 2011: SNK makes way for SNK Playmore
Shin Nihon Kikaku. That’s the original name of the video game company SNK, which was established by Eikichi Kawasaki in Japan in 1978. It was created during a time when arcade games were beginning to boom and bloom. Success in Japan led the company to expand to America in 1981. SNK settled into offices in Sunnyvale, California, with John Rowe at the head of operations. (Rowe is the currently the president and CEO of High Moon Studios, which is owned by Activision Blizzard.)
