Nolan Bushnell is back in business and ready to chance his arm on the Internet. The founder of Atari Corp, also famous for the Pizza Time Restaurants Inc chain and Chuck E Cheese, now wants to put jukeboxes that download their music, and card or coin-operated on-line games machines into bars, hotels and other public places. His new company is Aristo International Corp – he is director of strategic planning at the New York firm – and it plans to launch the machines worldwide this month. Bushnell and Aristo have invested more than $10m to develop three Pentium-based machines running Windows NT – TeamNet, on which people can play video games with opponents in another location, MusicNet Plus for ordering music as well as hearing it, and TouchNet for accessing the Internet. At the end of last month, the company previewed the machines to about 75 of the 100 or so distributors of coin-operated games to generate orders. Target locations include sports bars, hotels, restaurants, airports, railway terminals and such locations. TeamNet is described as about the size of a small billiard table, and it enables two teams of up to eight players each to compete against each other or against teams elsewhere via an Internet link. TouchNet enables people to use a coin-operated counter-top touch-screen computer to play games and send messages over the Internet. MusicNet Plus will play digital music and enable customers to buy recordings and merchandise from bands as well as tickets to events. The machines are made by vending machine maker Streak Technology Inc and Acer Inc may also make them.
