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Atari's first product reduced a video game to one knob, one rule and a single line of on-screen instruction. It became the first commercially successful arcade video game, drew a wave of imitators, and triggered a patent fight.
Commercial proof arrived here. A game understood in a second, in a bar, by someone who had never seen one, earned enough to justify an industry, and arcade manufacturers spent years chasing that legibility. The litigation that followed also taught a young business that intellectual property, not novelty, decided who profited.
