The Story of Axlon: Nolan Bushnell’s “Other” Gaming Company: Part 3
- Cassie
- 17 hours ago
- 6 min read
After a few successful years successfully making mostly inexpensive toys, Axlon did two dramatically different things. First, they entered into a partnership with toy juggernaut Hasbro. Second, despite original statements from Bushnell that he wanted to create a toy company disconnected with video games Axlon essentially became a video game company.
This shift isn’t a surprise given Bushnell’s history in the video game industry or that during the mid 1980’s one of his other companies was Sente Technologies. Sente was an arcade game company founded on the concept of a modular arcade game cabinet to make switching titles easier and cheaper for operators. Despite some innovative ideas, Sente would end up folding in 1988. Axlon unfortunately wouldn’t live much beyond this date.
Hasbro and NEMO
In July of 1986 Axlon entered into a three-year agreement with Hasbro to manufacture and market Axlon developed toys (1). Axlon was only a small part of Hasbro’s mid-1980’s surge which included both buying out several smaller competitors and buying into companies which were promising. Hasbro must have been satisfied with Axon’s 1986 holiday offering since this partnership would expand in March of 1987 giving Hasbro even more control over Axlon. Hasbro has been hesitant to deeply invest into electronics in the past after witnessing how their toy competition faired during the 1983 Video Game Crash. In an article for the Daily Press, Hasbro’s Vice President played off the heightened partnership as “All we are really doing at this point…is taking over the development of a product Axlon was working on for us”. (2)
This “product” was a new home gaming system codenamed NEMO, officially known as Control-Vision. NEMO stood for “Never Ever Mention Outside” showcasing the secret nature of the project within the companies. NEMO’s development started in 1985 with Axlon and another former Atari alumni and Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak. During certain developmental milestones the system included critical work from Activision’s David Crane and most critically Tom Zito from Digital Pictures.
NEMO was an attempt to make full motion interactive video games in the vain of Don Bulth’s Laserdisc based arcade game Dragon’s Lair for the home market using cheaper VHS technology. Developed around a modified Colecovision console and VCR it loaded gameplay data from multiple tracks on a VHS tape controlled by memory buffers in the console. Much like when Bushnell attempted to get the Atari 2600 off the ground buy bringing in a larger company (Warner Brothers); Axlon needed a big time investor to make NEMO happen. Hasbro was initially in for 7 million dollars, eventually expanding to 20 million after seeing a demo of the technology.
Planning for a debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1989, Hasbro pulled the plug unceremoniously on NEMO in late 1988. The technology worked but the cost was considered to be uncompetitive compared to the the Nintendo Entertainment System which was the current industry leader. Hasbro’s chairman Stephen Hassenfeld stated, “We do not believe that the system can be currently manufactured at a cost that would permit appropriate mass-market price levels” (3). Hasbro might have also seen the VHS format as both outgoing and not robust enough to withstand the rigors of repeated play. NEC had already released a CD-Rom format for it’s PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in the USA) gaming system by 1988 with similar game concepts to what NEMO developers had proposed.
Out of the handful of developed game titles for NEMO, Night Trap would go on to have a second successful, and controversial life due to its perceived risqué filming of women in what some perceived as promoting violence. Originally titled Scene of a Crime, Night Trap became one of the focal points of a 1993 US Senate commission hearing on violence in video games. If anything this attention to the B-movie antics in the game brought more attention to the game and probably increased sales for the Sega CD platform (4). Eventually Sega was pressured to pull the game from stores, only to release it one year later for its ill fated Sega 32X add-on (5).
The on-the-rails style shooter Sewer Shark developed for NEMO would find a release after its initial development on the Sega CD and 3DO system. Two unreleased and, as of current history unseen prototype games included a Police Academy game, which was completed (filed using the full cast of the later Police Academy films) yet never released in any other format possibly due to copyright reasons, and an unrealized Mad Max project. According to NEMO development team members this project was fully written, storyboarded, and had the involvement of Mad Max director George Miller who, at the time felt actor Mel Gibson would also be “on board”
NEMO’s fate is unknown at this time, although it is assumed that the prototype is still in the hands of David Crane in some storage unit somewhere. Hopefully this system will see the light of day before it becomes another lost bit of video game history. There is some footage of the system in action which can be seen on You Tube, which was originally a hidden easter egg for the Sega release of Night Trap.
Frenzy
In 1988 Axlon, perhaps due to the demise of Bushnell’s Sente arcade endeavor showcased Frenzy, a stand-alone arcade game. Frenzy (unrelated to the early 1980’s arcade video game from Stern) is more of a competitive memory light game similar to Milton Bradley’s Simon or Atari’s obscure arcade game Touch Me. Frenzy has no monitor, only a field of large lighted buttons and a ticket “kicker” like many redemption style games of the time. Frenzy was manufactured only in low numbers (Former Axlon engineer John Vifian has stated less than 100) and is a obscure arcade oddity today even for hardcore collectors. (7)
Atari 2600 Software and The End
The partnership Nolan Bushnell had brokered with Warner Brothers in 1976 needed to release the original Atari 2600 resulted in his dismissal from the company he founded. Ironically, it is with the Atari 2600 the Axlon story also ends. Axlon and Atari Corporation announced on June 1st 1988 that Axlon would develop new software for the 2600 and 7800 game systems. No longer owned by Warner Brothers, Atari Corporation was now under the ownership and guidance of the Tramiel family. Despite being woefully outdated by the late 1980’s Atari still sold new software for the 2600. Much of Atari’s late 80’s and 90’s software for all their gaming systems (including the handheld Lynx) was outsourced. This offered Bushnell an opportunity for some easy cash which Axlon desperately needed.
Axlon’s 2600 titles attempted to massively stretch the 2600’s ancient hardware capabilities to its limits. Axlon developed six games for the 2600 although only three of those titles were released at the time. No games appeared to have been developed for the 7800. Secret Quest was an attempt to create a Legend of Zelda style game around a space theming. The box even included a photo of Bushnell on the front, although he had little to do with the actual design of the game. Axlon would also develop Off the Wall based on the classic Atari game Breakout (but not the same as the Atari Games Off the Wall arcade title from 1991), and Motorodeo a very impressive split screen racer. Three additional titles; Save Mary a puzzle action game, Adventures of Max which was to be a platformer, and Shooting Arcade a light gun title would go unreleased. Save Mary would eventually get an official release thanks to vintage gaming enthusiasts.
These titles were some of the very last games for the 2600. The company would later be absorbed into Hasbro (ironically, so would Atari eventually), who likely were interested in its former successful assets like Petster. Bushnell would move onto countless other enterprises over the years but Axlon might be one of this most interesting post-Atari endeavors, coming close to recreating that early Atari vibe for innovation and risk taking.
(1) Business Updates. The Morning Union. July 12, 1986. p. 7.
(2) Hasbro Forms Subsidiary for Secret Line. Thousand Oaks Star. Associated Press. March 11, 1987. p. 37
(3) Hasbro Deep-Sixes $20 Million Video ‘Nemo’. Philadelphia Daily News. October 24, 1988. p.21
(4) Langberg, M. Sega to Withdraw Controversial ‘Night Trap’ Game from Stores. Knight-Ridder Tribune. January 11, 1994. p. 12
(5) Bryant, H. ‘Night Trap’ Delivers Technical Excellence. Oakland Tribune. March 5, 1995. p. 50
(7) Stilphen, S. John Vifian Interview. Atari Compendium. 2014. https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/john_vifian/interview_john_vifian.html
Also used for this series of articles…
Cohen, S. Zap The Rise and Fall of Atari. McGraw-Hill. 1984
Miller, G. Toy Wars. Random House. 1998