Original Chuck E. Cheese concept artwork by Roger Hector. After leaving Atari and working with Nolan Bushnell at Sente. This is from his personal archive and was created after talking with Bushnell about his vision for Chuck E. Cheese very early on. More material from the project will be coming to auction this fall. I thought the Cheesepedia community might enjoy seeing an early look!
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Would’ve this been some kind of like wall art or band board esc thing?Also could you provide a link to the auction,or at least the source of this image? I can’t seem to find it
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It’s on drafting board. This is the first time this piece has been published online.The auction will take place online at Bannerman Auctions starting October 5th-October 27th
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We know so little about Sente’s production, I wonder if this has any relation to that lost Electric Pizza Arcade that was sold in 2013. This first piece looks to be more like store decor, and they were in the same building as Pete’s Woodworking/Games Division, but as far as I’m aware Sente only did arcades. It’ll be great to see what comes up and I hope some history can be provided too to source for the articles!
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This is really cool! I’m excited to see what the other material is!
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Just saw a pic of this on r/chuckecheese! That’s super cool
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My understanding is that this concept was produced by Roger after hearing Bushnell’s idea for an “animatronic entertainment themed pizza restaurant” and this is what he came up with as a sort of vision of what the whimsical theme would be visually, if that makes sense. It has never been published, it was just something Roger Hector showed Bushnell based on a quick idea he heard from him! This was when he was at Atari, so it’s early.
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This reminds me of the early pre-Simon memory game Touch Me by Atari. It’s the only handheld game Steve Jobs worked on when he was at Atari. It’s a memory game just like this. I have a prototype of it that was presented to McDonald’s in 1979 from Roger’s collection as well that reminds me of this. Definitely a connection, but if I had to guess, I think it is inspired by that (Ralph Baer would famously “borrow” the idea of Touch Me to produce and market the Simon memory toy later on!)
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I guess id need to research when they met because Nolan’s idea for the restaurant was floated from as early as 1971 until it solidified in November '75, past that point it was Bob Black and Gene Landrum doing the concepting.
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They met when Roger Hector began working at Atari in 1976
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Do you happen to know when in 1976 did he get hired? There’s a big shift in the CEC concept around August of 1976 (I have it intricately detailed by the month/day here and am trying to lay out the clearest timeline). If this interaction and these concepts weren’t under Gene and were under Nolan in early '76 that’d be some of the only known concepts outside of Rick Rat that we know of for Nolan’s original direction for the restaurant!
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I am on the phone with Roger Hector now. He explains;
“I did that at Atari right after I arrived in the summer of 1976. I had a small office in the old roller skating rink where Atari started and my drafting table was right near Nolan’s office. Nolan was obviously the boss and one day he was spitballing ideas out loud for a pizza restaurant with animatronics where parents could have pizza and enjoy some time alone with the animatronic entertainment while their kids played games in the arcade, so after hearing his ideas, I came up with this drawing and showed it to him as kind of a concept of the theme. Also, he used to walk the floor after everyone had left the building and take my drawings on occasion, so I thought I would just draw him something he might like for an idea of what I thought Chuck E Cheese sounded like based on Nolan’s vision that day not long after I started in the '76”.
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That’s definitely before August then, as if there was any connection to Gene’s team he would have been working at the Sunnyvale Moffet Park offices. Neat to get some backstory!
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There’s going to be a lot of cool history coming out for the first time from this amazing collection, I’ll keep you guys posted. Thanks for the positive feedback. I grew up with CEC within walking distance to my house and loved it! So grateful that I get to share this.
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CORRECTION: It’s been confirmed this was produced by Roger Hector after discussing with Bushnell the idea for what would become CEC at Atari’s first location (Roller Rink) in the summer of 1976 (not at Sente later on). Thanks to Sudo-trans-pony for asking so I could get Roger on the phone).
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