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Warren Robinett




After graduating from Rice University , he was a programmer working for Western Geophysical in Houston, Texas . He received an M.S. from University Of California, Berkeley in 1976 , and went to work at Atari in November 1977 .

His first effort at Atari was '' Slot Racers '' for the Atari 2600 . While he was working on it, he had discovered and played Crowther and Woods' '' Colossal Cave Adventure '' at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and decided that a graphical video game version "would be cool". However, with 128 bytes of RAM and 4096 bytes of ROM , Atari's ''Adventure'' was a much simpler program, and with only a Joystick for input, the set of commands was necessarily brief. Even so, ''Adventure'' was a hit upon its 1978 release, and eventually sold a million copies.

Atari designers at the time were not given credit for their games, in fear of Headhunters . In response to this, Robinett placed in a hidden object in the game that would allow the player to reach a hidden screen which displayed the words "Created by Warren Robinett," hence creating the first known Easter Egg used in a video game.

Robinett then did a BASIC Programming cartridge that came in 1979 .

He quit Atari and founded The Learning Company in 1980 .


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