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cool http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/atari/articles/30-Secrets-of-Atari.html 30 Secrets of Atari The real story of Asteroids, Pac-Man, Pong and Pole Position By Steve Bloom, Computer Games, February 1984 7. Rick Mauer never programmed another game or Atari after he did Space Invaders for the VCS. He is said to have earned only $11,000 for a cartridge that grossed more than $100 million. 8. Todd Fry, on the other hand, has collected close to $1 million in royalties for his widely criticized VCS Pac-Man. In contrast, it's been reported that Toru Iwatani, the Japanese programmer who created the original Pac-Man game, made only several hundred dollars -- the standard Namco salary at the time -- for his work. 9. The man responsible for bringing Pac-Man to Atari -- Joe Robbins, former presi- dent of coin-op -- was severely reprimanded by the chairman of the board Ray Kassar for making the deal with Namco without consulting him. It seems Robbins was in Japan negotiating a legal matter with Namco at the time, and Namco apparently demanded that Atari buy the home rights to Pac-Man as part of the settlement. Pac-Man had yet to take off, but when it did, Robbins' gutsy decision paid off as Pac-Man went on to become the company's best-selling cartridge ever. Of course, the flooding of Pac-Man cartridges on the market was one of the primary causes for the video game crash of 1983...
