Sente Technologies (also known as Bally Sente, Inc.) was an arcade game company. Founded as Videa in 1982 by several ex-Atari employees, the company was bought by Nolan Bushnell and made a division of his
Pizza Time Theatre
Chuck E. Cheese (formerly known as Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre, Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza and simply Chuck E. Cheese's) is an American family entertainment center and pizza restaurant chain founded in 1977 by Atari's co-founder Nolan Bu ...
company in 1983. In 1984 the division was acquired by
Bally Midway
Midway Games Inc., known previously as Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known as simply Midway, was an American video game developer and publisher. Midway's franchises included ''Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage (series), Rampage'' ...
who continued to operate it until closing it down in 1988. The name Sente, like
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
, is another reference to Bushnell's favorite game,
Go and means "having the initiative."
Videa
Videa developed their first games, Gridlee (a.k.a. Pogoz, an arcade game), Lasercade (for the Atari 2600) and Atom Smasher (a.k.a. Meltdown, also for the Atari 2600) in 1982 with the intent of entering both the arcade and home console market in 1983. An attempt was made to get
Gottlieb
Gottlieb (formerly D. Gottlieb & Co.) was an American arcade game corporation based in Chicago, Illinois.
History
The main office and plant was located at 1140-50 N. Kostner Avenue until the early 1970s when a new modern plant and office was lo ...
to distribute Gridlee and Fox to release Lasercade and Atom Smasher (also known as Meltdown) but all three failed to come to market. The console market
crashed
"Crashed" is the third U.S. rock Single (music), single, (the fifth overall), from the band Daughtry (band), Daughtry's debut album. It was released only to U.S. rock stations on September 5, 2007. Upon its release the song got adds at those stat ...
in Christmas of 1983 and the prototype Gridlee machine did poorly out on its field test so Gottlieb and Fox both passed on their respective deals.
Sente Technologies
Shortly thereafter Videa was acquired by
Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consume ...
's
Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres company. Bushnell had left
Atari
Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
(a company he co-founded) in 1978 and was required to sign a non-competitive agreement to keep him out of the video game business for several years. He hoped to use Videa as a way to re-enter the arcade game market quickly without having to start a company from the ground up since his agreement was set to expire in late 1983. The intent to acquire Videa for $2.2 million was published in January 1983 and Sente Technologies was officially founded on October 1, 1983.
Although Sente did not officially exist until October, Atari sued Bushnell anyway, claiming his April purchase of the company broke their non-compete agreement. The suit was quickly put aside when Bushnell arranged a licensing deal with Atari, granting them exclusive rights to home releases of Sente's arcade games. Ultimately, only Hat Trick would be released for the
Atari 7800
The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it one o ...
in 1987.
Now a division of Pizza Time Theatres, they further developed the Gridlee prototype hardware to create the Sente Arcade Computer I and II systems. The SAC-I was novel for being one of the first arcade systems to use interchangeable "cartridges" (really just bare
PCBs
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1979 and internationally by t ...
with finger holes cut into them for easy removal) and quick swap control panels inside a durable steel-framed generic cabinet to allow operators to quickly and cheaply convert arcades from one game to another. This would become common practice some years later but was rare for 1984 (a similar concept from the era is
Data East
, also abbreviated as DECO, was a Japanese video game, pinball and electronic engineering company. The company was in operation from 1976 to 2003, and released 150 video game titles. Its main headquarters were located in Suginami, Tokyo. The Am ...
's DECO Cassette System). Three options were available to operators over the company's life: A large metal and plastic dedicated cabinet, a more standard wooden dedicated cabinet, and a conversion kit for existing machines. Some titles were also offered in
cocktail
A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink. Most commonly, cocktails are either a combination of spirits, or one or more spirits mixed with other ingredients such as tonic water, fruit juice, flavored syrup, or cream. Cocktails vary widely across ...
cabinets but they don't appear to have been available for all titles.
In addition to developing the Sente Arcade Computer, Sente also manufactured at least 240
Skee-Ball
Skee-Ball is an arcade game and one of the first redemption games. It is played by rolling a ball up an inclined lane and over a "ball-hop" hump (resembling a ski jump) that jumps the ball into bullseye rings. The object of the game is to collect ...
-type machines for Pizza Time Theater starting in 1982. Named Rollerbowl, it premiered during the
IAAPA
The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) represents over 6,000 amusement-industry members in more than 100 countries worldwide and operates several global attractions-industry trade shows. Its annual IAAPA Expo in ...
Expo in 1982. It also appeared at the Amusement Operators Expo in Chicago in 1983. It had a brief announcement in an issue of
Cash Box
''Cashbox'', also known as ''Cash Box'', was an American music industry trade magazine, originally published weekly from July 1942 to November 1996. Ten years after its dissolution, it was revived and continues as ''Cashbox Magazine'', an online ...
earlier that same year.
It was also the cover story in an undated 'The Games Examiner' newsletter, a Pizza Time Theater Company's newsletter, around the same time. In that same newsletter, it explained that the machine was similar to the pre-existing skee-ball game 'Chuck E. Cheese Roll', which had previously only been available to cooperate owned Pizza Time Theater locations.
Sente's first video arcade game, ''Snake Pit'' was demonstrated in December 1983 and the SAC-II system and ''Shrike Avenger'' was previewed at the same event. Snake Pit started shipping soon after but only a limited number of machines were sold before Sente had to stop distribution.
The Pizza Time Theatre chain was suffering from financial problems because of its recent expansion and acquisitions phase. After operating Sente Technologies for less than five months Pizza Time Theatre Inc. filed for bankruptcy and the Sente division was put up for sale. Bally Manufacturing purchased the division for $3.9 million in May 1984 and renamed it Bally Sente.
Bally Sente
While the company had halted the release of Snake Pit during the period between the Pizza Time Theatre bankruptcy and the finalization of their sale to Bally they continued to develop additional titles. Once production was started back up they released a number of titles that year, including: ''Snake Pit'',
''
Stocker'', several editions of ''
Trivial Pursuit
''Trivial Pursuit'' is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question t ...
'' and ''Hat Trick'', their best selling title. Bally Sente released a large number of games for the SAC-I system between 1984 and 1987 and developed at least one title, ''Shrike Avenger'', for the SAC-II system. While Sente had originally focused on the ability to easily convert existing cabinets to new releases, which centered around their original metal framed and plastic bodied cabinet, Bally was much less interested in the feature. Many of the expensive original model cabinets were returned to Sente after Pizza Time's bankruptcy. Operators were concerned the company would not resume production and they would be left with an expensive cabinet that would not have any additional games released for it. This allowed them to recover the cost in case Sente closed down completely. When cabinet production resumed under Bally it focused on standard wooden upright cabinets and standard cocktail cabinets because of their reduced cost. Also, the original cartridge-based game board system that enclosed the game's PCB inside a large cartridge was replaced with cheaper bare PCB designs that were less expensive to produce. Sente's games were never huge sellers and releases slowed down considerably as the years passed.
Last projects
The premier SAC-II game, ''Shrike Avenger'', had been in development for three years but a complete game was still months away. Bally Sente replaced the original developer with Owen Rubin and gave him six weeks to make a playable game out of the unfinished prototype. While the
arcade cabinet
An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...
and motion control computer were complete and in-game graphics were nearly done the game itself was unfinished. Rubin quickly developed a playable
"Last Starfigher" trainer type flight simulator and the game was put out on field tests. The game used a standard SAC-1 system connected to a powerful
Motorola 68000
The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...
based motion control computer for motion feedback through the motorized environmental flight simulator cabinet. It earned very well on field tests but had some major problems. Patrons complained of dizziness (some even became ill), the motors were prone to burning out and one units safety system failed, tipping the unit over, dumping a patron on the floor and almost crushing them. Bally deemed the SAC-2 system too expensive to produce (estimated to be $10k a unit in 1986 dollars, easily five times a typical games price) and a possible liability so the project was canceled.
A prototype of ''Shrike Avenger'' appeared at
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
's
Amusement Trades Exhibition International
The Amusement Trades Exhibition International (ATEI) is the major UK trade show for the coin-op and amusements trade.
See also
* BACTA (British Amusement Caterers Trade Association)
* Coinslot
''Coinslot International'' is a UK trade magazin ...
(ATEI) show in early 1986. The game was well received at the show for its
motion simulator
A motion simulator or motion platform is a mechanism that creates the feelings of being in a real motion environment. In a simulator, the movement is synchronised with a visual display of the outside world (OTW) scene. Motion platforms can provi ...
cabinet, drawing comparisons to
Sega
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
's ''
Space Harrier
is a third-person arcade rail shooter game developed by Sega and released in 1985. It was originally conceived as a realistic military-themed game played in the third-person perspective and featuring a player-controlled fighter jet, but techni ...
'' (1985) which was featured at the same show.
Clare Edgeley of ''
Computer and Video Games
''Computer and Video Games'' (also known as ''CVG'', ''Computer & Video Games'', ''C&VG'', ''Computer + Video Games'', or ''C+VG'') was a UK-based video game magazine, published in its original form between 1981 and 2004. Its offshoot website ...
'' hailed both ''Space Harrier'' and ''Shrike Avengers'' as "crowd stoppers" due to their motion cockpit cabinets and she said they may have both stolen the show;
Nintendo
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
's ''
Super Mario Bros.
is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The successor to the 1983 arcade game ''Mario Bros.'' and the first game in the ''Super Mario'' series, it was first released in 1985 for th ...
'' (1985) made its European debut at the same show, but did not draw as much attention as ''Space Harrier'' or ''Shrike Avenger''.
Sente's last project was the Sente Super System, also known as SAC-III. Based around a
Commodore
Commodore may refer to:
Ranks
* Commodore (rank), a naval rank
** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom
** Commodore (United States)
** Commodore (Canada)
** Commodore (Finland)
** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore''
* Air commodore, a ...
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to that ...
computer the system was intended to provide a powerful and cheap way for operators to upgrade existing arcades to more modern hardware but was also planned to be sold as standalone units. Moonquake was the premier title for the system but for unknown reasons the Sente Super System was canceled and it never went into full production. Bally Sente filed for bankruptcy and folded up soon after. All assets were transferred to Bally's Midway division in 1988. Sente was known for producing a rather odd assortment of games over its tenure as well as using some unique control schemes. In addition, some of the company's games featured "missing children" ads in their attract modes, an uncommon feature in arcade games.
Games developed by Sente
* ''Chicken Shift'' (1984)
* ''Euro Stocker'' (prototype)
[UnMAME'd Arcade Games: Rare Midway games, including some Bally Sente games](_blank)
/ref>
* ''Gimme A Break'' (1985, a pool game unrelated to the sitcom of the same name)
* ''Goalie Ghost'' (1984)
* ''Grudge Match'' (prototype, released in Italy by Playtronic)
* ''Hat Trick'' (1984, a hockey game, ported to DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...
and Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
by Capcom
is a Japanese video game developer and video game publisher, publisher. It has created a number of List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil' ...
. Also ported to the Atari 7800
The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it one o ...
by ibid inc. and published by Atari)
* ''Moonquake'' (Sente Super System prototype)
* ''Name that Tune'' (1986, based on the game show of the same name)
* ''Night Stocker'' (1986, a sequel to Stocker with a first-person perspective and a light gun to shoot at enemies)
* ''Off the Wall'' (1984, not related to the Atari 2600
The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...
game with the same title or the later arcade game with the same title)
* ''Rescue Raider'' (1987)
* ''Rollerbowl'' (1982, a skee-ball redemption game
Redemption games are typically arcade games of skill that reward the player proportionally to their score in the game. The reward most often comes in the form of tickets, with more tickets being awarded for higher scores. These tickets can then ...
)
* ''Sente Mini Golf'' (1985)
* ''Shrike Avenger'' (SAC-II prototype)
* ''Snacks'n Jaxson'' (1984)
* ''Snake Pit'' (1984)
* ''Spiker'' (1986, a volleyball game)
* '' Stocker'' (1984, a top-down racing game, ported to DOS and Commodore 64 by Capcom)
* ''Stompin'' (1986, a game where the player stepped on nine floor pads to kill bugs on the screen)
* ''Street Football'' (1986)
* ''Team Hat Trick'' (prototype, 15 playtest cocktail cabinets produced)TNT Amusements' YouTube Channel
/ref>
* ''Toggle'' (prototype)
* ''Trick Shot'' (prototype)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: All Star Sports Edition'' (1984)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Baby Boomer Edition'' (1984)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Think Tank Genus Edition'' (1984)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Genus II Edition'' (1984)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Young Player's Edition'' (1984)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Volumen I'' (1987, Spanish, licensed to Maibesa)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Volumen II'' (1987, Spanish, licensed to Maibesa)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Volumen III'' (1987, Spanish, licensed to Maibesa)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Volumen IV'' (1988, Spanish, licensed to Maibesa, runs on different arcade hardware)
* ''Trivial Pursuit: Volumen V'' (1988, Spanish, licensed to Maibesa, runs on different arcade hardware)
Legacy
Another game on the SAC-I hardware, called ''Rescue Raider'', was released in 1987. Although the game runs on the SAC-I hardware, it was released by Bally Midway, not Bally Sente. In 1989, Bally Midway released the sequel to Sente Mini Golf, called ''Mini Golf Deluxe''. It was released as part of the collection ''Tri-Sports'', which also included a bowling game called ''Power Strike'' and a pool game called ''Pool Shark''.
References
{{reflist, 30em
Midway Games
Defunct video game companies of the United States
Companies based in Sunnyvale, California
Companies based in Silicon Valley
Companies based in Milpitas, California
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1988