Presidential hopeful John McCain is targeting the directionless couch potato youth vote with video games. Poorly. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is doing a kick arse job of it, according to The Daily Show. Unless we're mishearing things, Master Obama is sporting the "Yes We Cannon" in his campaign game, something that's not out of the realm of possibility — and sensibility — when you're holding a quarter of a billion dollars in campaign funds. Do not click through if you're offended by abortion humour.

Nolan Bushnell (pictured) is a casual guy. As the Atari founder likes to point out, his games were easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master. And the controls for something like, I dunno, Pong? SIMPLE. Says Bushnell:

I think the Wii by Nintendo is getting games that once again are fun for people who don't want to make a career out of figuring out how to run a 47-button controller... I think that the business right now should be much, much bigger than it is. If it were evenly spread over all demographics and age groups, it'd be huge. But it's not. It's basically an 18 to 28 year-old male dominated business of about 15 million. That's where most of the traffic is. Casual games on the net add to that, but they're all network-based.

Wait, wait, wait. Back up, Bushnell! A 47-button controller? Oh man, would we love to see that! (Playing it, well, that's another matter.)

Bushnell Interview [Next-Gen]

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell recently talked to GameDaily about his uWink business, a growing chain of restaurants that feature touch terminals on every table - not only do they let users order their food that way, but they can also play games together.

And Bushnell estimated the number of games he'd be able to serve through uWink at 600 trillion games across 100,000 restaurants Ambitious - but hey, it's Nolan Bushnell, right?

When we covered Bushnell's recent talk at Wedbush Morgan's annual management access conference, we heard him say that he misses the idea of gaming as a social activity, since the decline of arcades, and that part of what he hopes to do with uWink is to revive that group spirit and keep multiplayer that's actually in-person alive.

In the GameDaily interview, he cited an example - Pong used to be a hot tool for chicks to pick up guys at bars?

OK, OK, kinda misleading headline -- his production company is producing "Atari" a biopic about Nolan Bushnell, Pong's developer and Atari's founder. Paramount bought the rights yesterday. Indications are that he will star, but not knowing the story yet, I don't know if that means he would play Bushnell or, perhaps, another character through whom the story of Bushnell and Atari is presented.

The Hollywood Reporter describes "Atari" as drawing on themes of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." I was hoping it'd be a movie adaptation of "Space War" -- just two ships drifting to the centre of the screen, shooting each other. Maybe a love interest. Somewhere. Maybe not.

Wherever the story ends up, it sounds like it's getting very serious treatment, and the outlook sounds favourable for a well made biography. Plus I love period pieces, even if I've lived in the period described.

Leonardo Di Caprio to Star in 'Atari' [The Hollywood Reporter, via ComingSoon.net, thanks reader D Elfman]

I am a creature of basic interests. I love Space Invaders. I love Pong. In fact I own the first pair of Invader shoes and one of those limited edition Pong clocks, so when I saw this table I got way too excited... judging by the absolute silence that greeted my enthusiasm when I shared this with the others in Kotaku Tower.

Created by German designer Moritz Waldemeyer, Pong Effect uses 2400 LEDs and two track pads to essentially recreate a game of air hockey. The best part, it looks like it was created for 4-year-olds. Oh, I know how absurd that is, but does it sound like I care? It doesn't.... for those of you who can't detect the waves of enthusiasm rippling off my keyboard right now.

Pong Updated for the 21st Century [The BBPS]

Back in November we pointed you to Pac-Txt, Pac-Man as a text adventure. Now we deliver you Pong rendered as a 180-page Choose Your Own Adventure book. It's like someone sat around thinking "Hey, you know that game Pong? What if we could make it even slower and more boring. But admit it, you're intrigued. And you can read the entire thing after the jump.

Hey! You got your Pong in my Breakout! You got your arm rasslin' in my Tetris! I swear, the only way to make boring classic video games playable and entertaining in modern times is to rig them to insane controls or pair them with another classic. Here are two.

Nolan Bushnell created Pong. He founded Atari. And Chuck E Cheese. So, yes, he is a great man. He's also a man who fancies he knows where there's money to be made when it comes to videogames, which is why he let slip during an interview at GDC that he's working on an MMO. No further info than that, sorry, but he does say that "as compelling as World of Warcraft is, it too shall find that there are other ways to play a game". So long as it involves rolling a character that can pull off smoking a pipe in a hot tub, I'm in.
Nolan Bushnell gets massive [Gamespot]

For those who may not have wasted away the weekend with a bottle of Jack and their favourite National Public Radio programming, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell made an appearance to celebrate the 35th anniversary of PONG. In his short interview, he talked about things like the public reaction to Pong "How does the tv station know what I've turned this knob?" before taking a few shots at the violent and complex games that followed. Listening to the interview feels a lot like eating the comforting, nostalgic food that only your mum could make right, and then cracking a carton of decade-old, freezer burned ice cream for dessert. Still, it's worth a listen.

Pong: The Ping Heard 'Round the World [via vh1gamebreak] [image]

The good news about this watch, with Tetris built-in, is that it looks just as playable as its Pong-playing counterpart. The bad news? They don't exist. These Nixon branded concept watches were knocked up by French product designer Lysandre Follet and are shown animated form at the link below. Music is included for maximum authenticity.

Tetris Forever [via Gizmodo]