Nutting Associates

File:Nutting Associates logo.svg

Company logo.

Nutting Associates was an arcade game manufacturer from Mountain View, California, formed in 1965 when Bill Nutting spun off "The Knowledge Computer" prototype from Edex Corp. Nutting, Richard Ball, and an electronic technician redesigned it to "The Computer Quiz" coin-operated trivia game. It underwent two redesigns, the third being the first solid state plug-in coin-op game. Ball did a concept, design and marketing brief for a coin-op video game. He started to develop "Space Command" but left Nutting to develop Cointronics Corp. with co-worker Ransom White. Their game "Lunar Lander" was the first audio reward game that in 1969 used the NASA tape "The Eagle has landed," as the reward.

In August 1971, Bill hired Nolan Bushnell who had an idea to put a clone of Spacewar! in its own box. Production began by the end of the year on a run of 1,500 Computer Space games, but neither Nutting nor Bushnell considered it a real success and only 500 to 1,000 were actually sold. Bushnell proposed to create a sequel/remake of the game but demanded he be given an ownership stake in the company in return. Nutting refused, and Bushnell left to form Atari.

When Nutting Associates later failed in 1973, Bill left the industry and went on to fly relief supplies in Africa. Nutting Associates went out of business in 1976. Their last title was an arcade game called Ricochet.

Bill's brother, David Judd Nutting, also worked in the video game industry. He formed Dave Nutting Associates, a consulting firm that produced many of Midway's games during the 1970s and early 80s.