Chuck E. Cheese began as an Atari strategy

That terrifying animatronic rat wasn't born out of a love for pizza, but as a corporate trojan horse for video games. Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, realized that restaurants were hesitant to buy bulky arcade cabinets. His cynical solution was to just open his own chain of family pizza restaurants that explicitly functioned as a giant arcade, ensuring a captive market for his own video game hardware.