Nutting Associates

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Nutting Associates was an early arcade game manufacturer from Mountain View, California, formed in 1968 by Bill Nutting. They introduced a number of mechanical coin-operated games, starting with a quiz game known as Computer Quiz, and moving on to more common fair like shooting games.

In August 1971, Bill hired Nolan Bushnell who had an idea to put a clone of Spacewar! in its own box. Production began by the end of the year on a run of 1,500 Computer Space games, but neither Nutting nor Bushnell considered it a real success and only 500 to 1,000 were actually sold. Bushnell then produced Pong, and originally offered it to Nutting, but demanded he be given an ownership stake in the company in return. Nutting refused, and Bushnell left to form Atari.

When Nutting Associates later failed in 1973, Bill left the industry and went on to fly relief supplies in Africa. Nutting Associates went out of business in 1976. Their last title was an arcade game called Ricochet.

Bill's brother, Dave, also worked in the video game industry, forming a consulting firm that produced many of Midway's games during the 1970s and early 80s. See Dave Nutting Associates for details.