Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
Chuck E. Cheese is an American entertainment restaurant chain founded on May 17, 1977, by Atari, Inc.'s co-founder Nolan Bushnell. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, each location features arcade games, amusement rides and musical shows in addition to serving pizza and other food items; former mainstays included ball pits, crawl tubes, and animatronic shows. The chain's name is taken from its main character and mascot, Chuck E. Cheese. The first location opened as Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre in San Jose, California. It was the first family restaurant to integrate food with arcade games and animated entertainment, thus being one of the pioneers for the "family entertainment center" concept.
Animatronics is technology relating to the usage of electronics to animate puppets or other figures. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films, video games and in theme park attractions.
The Rock-afire Explosion (RAE) is an animatronic character band designed and manufactured by Creative Engineering, Inc. (CEI) for use in ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants in the 1980s and early 1990s. The band's characters were various anthropomorphized animals, including a brown bear, a grey wolf and a silverback gorilla. They performed medleys of classic rock, pop, and country music, as well as original compositions and comedic skits.
Robert Lee Brock was an American businessman. He was born in Pawnee Rock, Kansas, and graduated from Sterling High School and the University of Kansas, where he was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity.
Duncan Brannan is an American voice actor, who has provided voices for numerous mainstream children's entertainment characters, English-language dubs of Japanese anime, and other commercial properties. He is mainly known for being the voice of Chuck E. Cheese from 1993-2012.
Samuel Frederick "Ted" Dabney Jr. was an American electrical engineer, and the co-founder, alongside Nolan Bushnell, of Atari, Inc. He is recognized as developing the basics of video circuitry principles that were used for Computer Space and later Pong, one of the first and most successful arcade games.
Bullwinkle's Entertainment, previously known as Family Fun Centers & Bullwinkle's Restaurant and formerly Bullwinkle's Family Food n' Fun is a chain of family entertainment centers. Locations feature a sit-down restaurant, complemented by arcade games, go-karts, bumper boats, mini golf, laser tag, a ropes course, a zip line, and small rides for children. Games and activities are generally themed around the company's namesake, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
Cheese is a dairy product usually made from the milk of cows, buffalo, goats or sheep.
ShowBiz Pizza Place, or simply ShowBiz Pizza, was an American family entertainment center and restaurant pizza chain founded in 1980 by Robert L. Brock and Creative Engineering (CEI). It emerged after a separation between Brock and owners of the Chuck E. Cheese franchise, Pizza Time Theatre. ShowBiz Pizza restaurants entertained guests through a large selection of arcade games, coin-operated rides, and animatronic stage shows.
Chuck E. Cheese in the Galaxy 5000 is a 1999 direct-to-video film that was based upon Chuck E. Cheese's. It was released on October 5, 1999 in CEC restaurants and also sold at Toys "R" Us. The plot is that a boy named Charlie Rockit needs $50,000 to fix his aunt and uncle's tractor engine, so Chuck E. Cheese and his friends go to the Galaxy 5000 to win it in a race. The distribution company, FUNimation Entertainment, would go on nearly three decades later to become Crunchyroll, one of the biggest anime streaming services.
Rapid T. Rabbit and Friends was an independently produced puppet and variety show created and produced by Richard Concepcion. The show was broadcast weekly on public-access cable TV in New York City from 1983 to 2017. The show ran on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Queens Public TV, and aired online every Sunday afternoon over the Pawpet Broadcasting Network before the Funday Pawpet Show.
Pizza Showtime was a family restaurant and entertainment centre operating in Perth, Western Australia from 1980 to 1984. Similar to the American Chuck E. Cheese chain it was a sit down pizza restaurant complemented by arcade games, and animatronic characters.
Sente Technologies was an arcade game company. Founded as Videa in 1982 by ex-Atari employees Roger Hector, Wendi Allen, and Ed Rotberg, the company was bought by Nolan Bushnell and made a division of his Pizza Time Theatre company in 1983. In 1984 the division was acquired by Bally Midway who continued to operate it until closing it down in 1988. The name Sente, like Atari, is another reference to Bushnell's favorite game, Go and means "having the initiative."
Aaron Fechter is an American mechanical engineer, entrepreneur, voice actor, singer, and musician who owns and operates Creative Engineering, Inc. (CEI). He is best known as the creator of The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic show featuring a variety of characters created primarily for Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants throughout the 1980s. A fallout between Showbiz and CEI, along with the chain's dwindling revenue, led to the show's decline and eventual removal by the early 1990s.
Robert Allan Black is an American writer and director. He began his career as an advertising copywriter. His film writing and directing work includes the feature documentary, Loving Henri (2017). The documentary pertained to a freed Nazi slave turned philanthropist Henri Landwirth (1927–2018). The filming occurred throughout 14 years.
"Risk E. Rat's Pizza and Amusement Center" is the sixth episode of the sixteenth season of the American sitcom television series It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It is the 168th overall episode of the series and was written by executive producer Rob Rosell, and directed by co-executive producer Nina Pedrad. It originally aired on FXX on July 5, 2023.
