The Ted Dabney Experience

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 fingerprints. We also discuss goat slaughter, littering and smoking the reefer.

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.

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 working with Eugene Jarvis, Warren Davis and the late, great Python Anghelo at Williams Electronics. And rubber chickens.

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 monitor (over a pinball machine in Chuck E. Cheese) and the finer details of doing business with an early-Eighties JVC. Naturally, Paul asks about hot tubs at Atari.

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 closed its doors for good in 2002. The Ted Dabney Experience talks with Mike about the gentleman’s arcade game, Gravitar, lost classic Akka Arrh, shooting aliens on toilets and Atari’s seminal coin-op title, Star Wars.

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.

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 views on keeping old games alive, ACAM’s educational mission, The King of Kong, the Covid-19 lockdown and the future of The American Classic Arcade Museum.

TDE sits down with Jamie Fenton, the developer of the original multi-game shooter, Gorf. Digging deep into Jamie’s early life and career with Dave Nutting Associates and Midway, we talk transgender issues, Datsun sports cars, Larry Cuba of Star Wars SFX fame, the original US military application of the Gorf flight stick, the ill-fated Robby Roto and the fascinating (yet ultimately aborted) development of Ms.Gorf.

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.