Audio By Carbonatix
Nolan Bushnell: making it easier and easier for people not to move to have fun
Nolan Bushnell is known for having created two things that made America very, very fat: the video game (more or less — he’s the papa of Atari, after all) and Irving-based Chuck E. Cheese’s, maker of perhaps the worst pizza not currently residing in your freezer. He is also, most recently, the man behind something called uWink, which, says here, is “an interactive, social restaurant, where you are in control of your meal and your fun.” Whatever that means.
Actually, it means “social gaming,” in Bushnell’s parlance — which is nothing more than a touch screen at your table, from which you can order a meal or play a video game or watch a movie trailer. (Sounds like Chuck E. Cheese’s, without your actually having to move an inch. Also: It sounds like your house.) At the moment, there is but one uWink in the country, in Woodland Hills, California. But it says here that uWink is about to open a Dallas location — in the Galleria, likely by next summer: “The 8,000 square foot restaurant is scheduled to open in mid-2008 and is located in front of Galleria Dallas’s famous ice skating rink and classy shopping center.” Classy, indeed. –Robert Wilonsky
