What was Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs like when he worked at Atari?
He was a bright kid. He did a couple of very interesting projects — he and [Apple cofounder] Steve Wozniak did Breakout — but he was not like a major player inside the company. Did you have any idea what he was up to? Oh, yeah. In fact, I always laugh and say I had a chance to have a third of Apple Computer for $50,000 and turned him down. Shows how smart I am. Were you sad to leave Atari? It’s one of those things where I wasn’t sad to leave once I realized it wasn’t my company anymore. I think what I had was seller’s remorse. I would have loved to stay at Atari forever when it was the kind of Atari that I envisioned. But as soon as it became the kind of company that Warner envisioned, the fascination was significantly less. How did you come up with the name Chuck E. Cheese? It was a name you can’t say without smiling, and that was the rationale. Did you ever hear any stories about the Chuck E. Cheese characters giving kids nightmares? Oh, yeah. There’s an axiom that says little kids
