I never spent much time in any one building. Industrial design was an interdepartmental type of a major-a little bit of engineering, little bit of art, little bit of materials and processes, some industrial studies classes. Wayne Champion and Jack Crist, I believe, were the professors that started the department. It wasn’t that old when I arrived in-probably ’73. And I had just heard about a relatively new Industrial Design Department that opened at San Jose State.
Honestly, that one had more to do probably with cost. So I started looking around and, of course, the premiere school for that, at least back then and I think still today is the Pasadena Art Center School of Design. I’m still a car guy, always have been, and I love design and I thought why not meld the two together? I said I want to go after transportation design, which I did. I had always been the kind in school who was drawing cars in his binder, in my notebook, and maybe instead of paying attention. When I came back from that six months of duty, I picked up where I left off and that’s when I had a change of heart. And, of course, that is what I did for the next several years I did the weekends once a month and summers. I chose to go into the reserves, which was a six-year contract, because it only required six months of active duty, meaning I could get back to my studies relatively quickly. And so that sort of derailed my education for a short time. That recruiter told me he had no shortage of volunteers.
… And I was one of the lucky ones that the Coast Guard selected. Went to the local recruiting offices, in those days in Oakland, California, and the Coast Guard was one of the places. And soon after that, I got my draft notice, and I realized I’d better do something or I’m going to be in the army. And about that time, my lottery number came up in the draft, and unfortunately it was low-it was a number like seventeen. I was taking prearchitecture classes along with art classes. I just was going to be taking my general education and why not just stay home and go to the local school (Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California), which I did. Could you give us a little background on your decision to attend San Jose State at that time, and why study industrial design? Raiford Guins: You did your industrial design training at San Jose State University.
#BATTLEZONE 2 PLAYER MODEL FULL#
The full transcript will be deposited in the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries. This interview has been edited for length and readability. ROMchip editors Raiford Guins and Henry Lowood sat down with Querio at his home in Walnut Creek, California, in July 2019 to learn more about his time at Atari and direct involvement in Army Battlezone. Querio designed cabinets for: Atari Basketball (1979) Video Pinball (1979) Battlezone (1980), including the military conversion Army Battlezone (1981) the cocktail table for Warlords (1981) and Tempest (1981), the last cabinet he worked on before moving into Atari’s research and design division until his departure from the company in 1984. and sales from the release of the Atari VCS. Upon graduation in 1977, he went full-time during a period when the company’s industrial design division was experiencing significant growth due to the acquisition of Atari Inc. During his senior year, he obtained a paid internship with Atari’s coin-op division in 1976. Querio trained in industrial design at San Jose State University in the mid-1970s. 1 Was it meant for training purposes? Envisioned as a recruitment device at the height of arcade game play? Or was it simply seen as army-themed leisurely play for a breakroom or at a PX? One thing, however, is known: the person who did the industrial design work on the cabinet for Army Battlezone was Mike Querio, an industrial designer at Atari.
#BATTLEZONE 2 PLAYER MODEL SIMULATOR#
Beyond the existence of prototypes bearing titles like Bradley Trainer and Army Battlezone, little documentation exists at public institutions (e.g., Stanford University, The Strong) on Atari’s development of its combat simulator or the army’s plans for its installation on US bases. In the wake of the popularity of Atari Inc.’s coin-op video game machine, Battlezone (1980), a first-person futuristic tank combat simulation, the US Army approached the company to develop a version for its Bradley fighting vehicle, an armored infantry combat vehicle that went into service starting in 1981.
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