Sente Technologies
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| Industry | Video arcade games |
|---|---|
| Fate | Bankuptcy |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Defunct | 1988 |
| Headquarters | Originally Milpitas, California, later Sunnyvale, California, United States |
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Key people
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Roger Hector (co-founder), Howard Delman (co-founder) and Ed Rotberg (co-founder), Nolan Bushnell (chairman), Owen Rubin (game designer) |
| Products | Snake Pit,Stocker, Hat Trick, Street Football |
Sente Technologies (also known as Bally Sente, Inc.) was an arcade game developer. 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 company in 1983. In 1984 the division was acquired by Bally Midway who continued to operate it until closing it down in 1988. The name Sente, like Atari, is another reference to Bushnell's favorite game, Go and means "having the initiative."
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 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 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.
Shortly thereafter Videa was acquired by Nolan Bushnell's Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres company. Bushnell had left Atari (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.
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 with finger holes cut into them for easy removal) and quick swap control panels inside a 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. Three options were available to operators: 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 cabinets but they don't appear to have been available for all titles.
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