This is from Gear Magazine


1- Nolan Bushnell founded Atari with $500 in 1972. He sold it to Warner Communications in 1976 for $28 million and went on to create the Chuck E. Cheese franchise.

2- In 1983, faced with the colossal flop of it' s E.T.:The Extraterrestrial, Atari emptied 14 tractor-trailor trucks of that game' s cartridges into a New Mexico landfill.

3- Pac-Man was originally called Puck-Man until Atari realized that kides could easily scrape off some paint to spell Fuck-Man.

4- Experts extimate that teenage boys play video games an average of 10 hours per week.

5- They spend somehwere between 2 and 3 hours a week doing homework.

6- Fortunately, playing video games increases your IQ, according to researchers at Cornell University.

7- Presaging rave culture, a Nintendo rep in the early ' 80s was quoted as saying that if video games actually affected kids, Pac-Man players would spend their time ingesting pills, running through dark mazes and litening to electronic music.

8- The designers of Tom Clancy' s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, tear-gassed and flash-banged themselves to help inspire the most realistic game effects possible.

9- The designers of Gran Turismo crashed numerous Porsches and Ferraris in an effort to add authenticity to that video game.

10- In 1976, the suburb of Mesquite, TX, banned teens from arcades. In 2002, Mesquite had the most video game development studios in the world.

11- According to a recent study, male computer characters outnumber female characters 13 to one.

12- Of the female characters, 30% had been kidnapped or need rescuing.

13- Heavy video game players (2-7 hours per day) show relatively little activity in the part of the brain which controls emotion and creativity.

14- The computer Buzz Aldrin used to pilot the Apollo 11 lunar module onto the moon' s surface in 1969 was 17,046 times less powerful than the computer processor used in today' s Xbox.

15- In 2000, Saddam Hussein purchased 4,000 Playstations and Playstation 2 game consoles. He is beleived to have adapted their high-speed processors for use in his long-range missil guidance system.

16- In 2002' s Rocky, the boxer' s appearance changes througout the game to reflect Sylvester Stallone' s numerous plastic surgeries.

17- Sly approved each rendering.

18- In 1983, protestors opposing the contruction of a $3 million video arcade in New Jersey charged it would " mesmerize youngsters, rob them of their lunch money, provide them with a center for illicit drug traffic and cause them the downfall of youth baseball, music lessons and, yes, the very SAT score of the community."

19- In 1984, Ronald Reagan said, " Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye coordination in playing these games. They' ll be our outstanding pilots."

20- In the summer of 2002, the U.S. Army released " America' s Army" , the first computer game designed specifically to be used as a recruiting tool.