[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

In that same newsletter, it explained that the machine was similar to the pre-existing skee-ball game 'Chuck E. Cheese Roll', which had previously only been available to corporate owned Pizza Time Theater locations.

Sente's first video arcade game, Snake Pit was demonstrated in December 1983 and the SAC-II system and Shrike Avenger was previewed at the same event.

While the company had halted the release of Snake Pit during the period between the Pizza Time Theatre bankruptcy and the finalization of their sale to Bally they continued to develop additional titles.

Bally Sente replaced the original developer with Owen Rubin and gave him six weeks to make a playable game out of the unfinished prototype.

Bally deemed the SAC-2 system too expensive to produce (estimated to be $10k a unit in 1986 dollars, easily five times a typical games price) and a possible liability so the project was canceled.

[15][16] Clare Edgeley of Computer and Video Games hailed both Space Harrier and Shrike Avengers as "crowd stoppers" due to their motion cockpit cabinets and she said they may have both stolen the show; Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. (1985) made its European debut at the same show, but did not draw as much attention as Space Harrier or Shrike Avenger.

Based around a Commodore Amiga 500 computer the system was intended to provide a powerful and cheap way for operators to upgrade existing arcades to more modern hardware but was also planned to be sold as standalone units.