On that October day, a nuclear physicist, Dr. William 'Willy' Higinbotham, had prepared something special for Brookhaven's guests. In the past, he had noticed that visitors didn't connect well with the static displays shown at the fair. Willy wanted to create something more compelling for the lab's visitors to interact with. Along with his colleague, Dave Potter, Willy devised an idea to create an interactive experience for their visitors.

For most people, crashing means either an application has frozen or entirely disappeared. Sometimes, this is followed by a dialog box asking “Would you like to send a crash report?” Users hit “Send” and move on with their lives, and, most of the time, never think about that moment again. But there is an entire world behind that interaction which is key to driving technology forward.

At BugSplat, we are passionate about preventing software and video game crashes—but not all crashes are caused by bugs in code! In the early 80’s the video game industry was booming in North America - the price of home consoles had dropped, and the demand for new video games was skyrocketing. The video game craze had everyone wanting to play video games, and companies were scrambling to meet the demands of consumers. The stage was set for the most famous video game crash in history.