From late 1975 and throughout 1976, work proceeded on Atari’snew programmable home system.Bushnell and Atari’s president, Joe Keenan, hoped to release it in time
for Christmas 1977, but realized they didn’t have the finances to do so. Bushnell wanted to take the company public but his underwriter believed that that wouldn’t raise as much as they needed. Bushnell then sought help from Don Valentine, a venture capitalist who suggested that Bushnell should Find someone to buy the company. Bushnell really didn’t want to do that but he felt it was absolutely necessary to save the company.
Warner Communications was a huge entertainment conglomerate that was already involved in movies, publishing and music. During the mid-seventies, sales from Warner’s most profitable division, its music division, began falling. Warner’s executives concluded that the music business had reached its peak and that the huge profits that they had been…
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Leonard Herman, The Game Scholar, is regarded as one of the earliest and most respected videogame historians. The first edition of his book Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames, which was published in 1994, is considered to be the first serious and comprehensive book about the history of videogames. He has written articles for Videogaming & Computer Illustrated, Games Magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Pocket Games, Classic Gamer Magazine, Edge, Game Informer, Classic Gamer Magazine, Manci Games, Gamespot.com and Video Game Trader, which he also edited. He has also contributed articles to several videogame-related books, including Supercade, The Video Game Explosion and The Encyclopedia of Video Games. Mr. Herman has also written the book ABC To the VCS (A Directory of Software for the Atari 2600), a compendium of game summaries. He has also written and designed user's manuals for the following Atari VCS games: Cracked, Save the Whales, Pick-Up, Rush Hour, Looping, The Entity and Lasercade, as well as the user's guide to Ralph Baer's Pinball! for the Odyssey2. In 1994, he founded Rolenta Press, a publisher of videogame books, whose catalogue included Videogames: In the Beginning, by Ralph H. Baer, the inventor of the videogame console, and Confessions of the Game Doctor by Bill Kunkel, the world's first videogame journalist. Two Rolenta Press books were included in a list of the top ten videogame books of all time by Game Informer magazine in 2008. Mr. Herman has served as an advisor for Videotopia, Classic Gaming Expo and the National Videogame Museum. He has appeared in several episodes of G4's Icons and in the documentary, The King of Arcades. In 2003, Mr. Herman received a Classic Gaming Expo Achievement Award in recognition for his accomplishments in documenting game history
