Asteroid

Asteroid, codenamed VP-2, was designed to be a racing game that would be simple to create to fulfill an earlier contract with Bally Midway; Atari had initially offered Pong during its development to fulfill the contract, but had been rejected.

Development of Asteroid began in Summer 1972 by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, based on ideas by him and co-founder Ted Dabney. The final design was done by Dabney, possibly with assistance by Bushnell and Pong designer Allan Alcorn. The engineering and prototyping was done by Alcorn; after it was completed and the design given to Midway to be released as Asteroid, Atari produced its own nearly identical version as Space Race.

Midway felt that the release of Space Race violated their contract with Atari for Asteroid, and the two companies agreed in exchange to drop Atari's three percent royalty cut for Asteroid machines