Everybody copied Atari products. So we started messing with them and it was fun. We bought enough chips that we could get them mislabeled. So we bankrupted at least two companies which copied our boards, and bought all the parts but they were the wrong parts, so they're sitting on all this inventory they can't sell because the games don't work.

People hate to and will not read instructions.

I was actually the manager of the games department of an amusement park when I was at college, so I understood the coin-op side of the games business very well.

I believe that in games, when you're talking about pitting my wits and my brain against your wits and your brain, that simplicity of the game becomes a dominant factor.

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.

I don't feel 70. I am still looking out from 14-year-old eyes.

In 1980, business at my company, Chuck E. Cheese's, was thriving and I was feeling flush. So I bought a very large house on the Champ de Mars in Paris, right between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire. The home was quite amazing: At six stories, it spanned 15,000 square feet and featured marble staircases and a swimming pool in the basement.