Quickly skimming it, I found no evidence of what the future actually held, from Wikipedia [1]:<p>> In 1981, Pizza Time Theatre went public; they lost $15 million in 1983. By early 1984, Bushnell's debts were insurmountable, resulting in the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for Pizza Time Theatre Inc. on March 28, 1984.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_E._Cheese" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_E._Cheese</a>
As someone from Missouri it was very jarring that the map of all their restaurants is shown on a US map, except for some reason the states of Iowa and Missouri are conjoined.<p>I wonder if this was just a mistake? Or perhaps Mr. Cheese was well known for his radical Missouri-Iowa annexation stance in the early 80s?
Looks like someone just saw the latest Brightsun Films video.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbI3zOm2BkE</a>
Chuck E. Cheese's, Silicon Valley Startup: The Origins of the Best Pizza Chain Ever - <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck-e-cheeses-silicon-valley-startup-the-origins-of-the-best-pizza-chain-ever/277869/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/chuck...</a><p>> You may not know this, but Chuck E. Cheese's -- yes, the pizza place -- has its origins as firmly planted in the soil of Silicon Valley as Apple, HP, or Intel. In fact, it sprang from Nolan Bushnell's Atari like Athena to the videogame company's Zeus.<p><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40425172/robots-pizza-and-magic-the-chuck-e-cheese-origin-story" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.fastcompany.com/40425172/robots-pizza-and-magic-...</a>
Growing up during the arcade/video game boom, Showbiz/Chuck E Cheese was an amazing place (ours converted over some point I'm not sure if they all did or what)<p>It's kind of weird how in the last ten or so years it devolved into a place more famous for fights and shootings between drunken parents, than pizza and video games.
Chuck E. Cheese's chairman was Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and creator of Pong. Woz and Jobs used to work for him and offered him a third of Apple for $50k in the 1970s.<p>"I was so smart, I said no. It's kind of fun to think about that, when I'm not crying." -Nolan Bushnell
I got my first bike at a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese in San Jose on a Sunday in March 1983. (The location still exists.) The animatronic puppets were large, loud, gracelessly mechanical, and creepy to little kids. That aside, it was difficult to argue with ever sort of arcade game, skeeball, whackamole, and basketball game that spat out the all-important tickets to win carnival prizes.
One of my earliest memories is of Showbiz Pizza (when the name was changed a few years later after the merger, we continued to call it Showbiz because none of us knew it was the knock-off) and I had a Billy Bob doll (one of the ones here I’m assuming from the 1984-1990 era unless mine actually came from an older cousin or my sister who is 8 years older than me <a href="https://www.showbizpizza.com/sppcollect/dolls/dolls_billy.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.showbizpizza.com/sppcollect/dolls/dolls_billy.ht...</a>) that I kept in my room alongside some tokens that I stored in my jewelry box (because if you are two years old, you keep your tokens in a jewelry box).<p>I was born after the “collapse” of the Chuck E. Cheese business and the late 70s/early 80s home video game era as a whole (but just in time for the NES to take over the world and reignite the industry), so I don’t have the same memories of these as places to play video games (I don’t think I ever really interacted with an arcade cabinet until Mortal Kombat in 1992 or 1993, and even that was almost certainly after the home versions were out out) because we had a Nintendo and that was video games to me, but I remember it for skee-ball and the animatronic shows. I loved the shows. Watching the history of this stuff and the stuff on Showbiz on Last Week Tonight and other channels is wild to me that this was something that actually existed in our world in the last 35 years.<p>After our Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese closed (another one still existed but it was further away), the big thing was “Discovery Zone” - which tried to do the same thing except it had lots of indoor playground equipment. But I always just strapped into the shooting or basketball games that would reward those with good hand-eye coordination with tickets and stuff. And I went to my first Dave & Busters in third grade and then I discovered what a Chuck E. Cheese for adults looked like and that my friends, THAT was the dream for many many years.
Cannot see CEC/SBP without linking John Oliver's excellent segment.<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lj1ixNIf1dA">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lj1ixNIf1dA</a> "Last Squeak Tonight Presents: A History of Chuck E. Cheese"<p>Minor spoiler: Chuck E. Cheese and his friends are pedophiles.<p>Or as John Oliver puts it,<p>>> <i>"When we started writing something about Chuck E. Cheese for you, we were thinking 'This will be 5, 6 minutes, tops.' But the more we looked into it, the more fascinated we got, and this officially got out of hand. So, I'm going to be talking about Chuck E. Cheese for... and I'm not kidding about this... the next 25 minutes."</i><p>Technically, it was the "alternate" segment to an episode on HOAs and posted at lastsqueaktonight.com, which seems to be empty now. But in my head, it was the original segment and didn't get approved.
I went to Chuck E. Cheese as a young kid, but I vastly preferred Leaps and Bounds [1].<p>Leaps and Bounds had gigantic playgrounds. Tunnels, slides, gigantic net treehouses and overhangs. They were gargantuan. You could take nerf guns and have hours of physical exercise and fun with your friends.<p>Chuck E. Cheese had arcades, which were outclassed by at-home video games. I never understood the appeal. I'd rather have played Super Mario RPG or Mario 64. Leaps and Bounds locations even had a modest arcade.<p>When Chuck E Cheese took them over, they ripped out the physical playgrounds and replaced it all with arcades. Major downgrade.<p>I'd much rather go to an 80's themed neon and blacklight arcade.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaps_and_Bounds_(playplace)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaps_and_Bounds_(playplace)</a>
Does anyone know what the name of that purple character with the yellow hair and patch on its belly is? one of the puppets in that unfunny hack jeff dunham's collection looks like a direct ripoff of that character
Look at that graphic! The mouse, as Pied Piper, leading those kids (whose eyes roll back as they proceed, trancelike) away from the safety of their castle — their home. The kid closest to Chuck is so far gone that he has become part animal himself. But to Chuck, this is merely business, as indicated by his briefcase and dead eyes. He is only there to collect the parents' money, and the children's souls.<p>Chuck E. Chichikov.<p>/s
The They Create Worlds podcast (video game history) did a nice episode on the history of Chuck E Cheese a few years back: <a href="http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-story-of-chuck-e-cheese/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-story-of-chuck-e-c...</a>
on page 13, Money Going Out, bottom right corner<p>there's a cartoon of Chuck E Cheese looking like he's behind bars? right under the banner saying Taxes<p>was the illustrator trying to tell the kids something