Editing Nolan Bushnell (section)

===Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre===
{{main|Chuck E. Cheese}}

In 1977, while at Atari, Bushnell purchased Pizza Time Theatre back from Warner Communications. It had been created by Bushnell, originally as a place where kids could go and eat [[pizza]] and play [[video game]]s, which would therefore function as a distribution channel for Atari games. Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre also had [[animatronic]] animals that played music as entertainment. It is known that Bushnell had always wanted to work for Walt Disney, but was continually turned down for employment when he was first starting out after graduation; Chuck E. Cheese was his homage to Disney and the technology developed there. In 1981 Bushnell turned over day-to-day food operations of Chuck E. Cheese's to a newly hired restaurant executive and focused on [[Catalyst Technologies]].

Through 1981 and 1982, Bushnell concentrated on PTT subsidiaries [[Sente Technologies]] and Kadabrascope.  Sente was a reentry into the coin-operated game business. Arcade cabinets would have a proprietary system with a cartridge slot so operators could refresh their games without having to buy whole new cabinets.<ref>
{{cite web
  | title = The Games Examiner – "Sente Technologies" Feature
  | url=http://showbizpizza.com/info/documents/ptt/ptt_gamesexaminer-sente.pdf
  | access-date = February 11, 2017 }}</ref> Kadabrascope was an early attempt at computer assisted animation. In 1983 as the restaurants started to lose money, Sente, though profitable, was sold to Bally for $3.9 million and Kadabrascope was sold to [[Lucasfilm]] which became the beginnings of what became [[Pixar]].

During this time Bushnell was using large loans on his Pizza Time stock to fund Catalyst. By the end of 1983, Chuck E. Cheese was having serious financial problems. President and long-time friend Joe Keenan resigned that fall. Nolan tried to step back in, blaming the money problems on over-expansion, too much tweaking of the formula and saturation in local markets by the management team. He resigned in February 1984, when the board of directors rejected his proposed changes, and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater (now named after its famous rat mascot) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March of 1984.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Potts |first=Mark |date=March 29, 1984 |title=Pizza Time Files for Bankruptcy |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1984/03/30/pizza-time-files-for-bankruptcy/b4baa402-b9c9-4684-b8cc-bedc5f132bc6/ |access-date=September 23, 2024 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]}} {{subscription required}}</ref>

[[ShowBiz Pizza Place]], a competing Pizza/Arcade family restaurant, then purchased Pizza Time Theatre in May 1985 and assumed its debt. The newly formed company, ShowBiz Pizza Time, Inc., operated restaurants under both brands before unifying all locations under the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza brand by 1993. Today over 560 locations of this restaurant are in business.