Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater is a chain of restaurants with its origins in video games. A passion project of Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, the company's success in the 1970s gave Bushnell the opportunity to get the concept of a family-friendly restaurant that was also an amusement center off the ground. The restaurant would serve pizza because, in Bushnell's words, "there are very few components and not many ways to go wrong," and the centerpiece of the restaurant would be an animatronic show starring coyotes.

However, when Bushnell bought his first costume, it was of a mouse. Wisely, Bushnell convinced the chain not to call it "Rick Rat's Pizza," and thus "Chuck E. Cheese" was born.

The animatronic element of Chuck E. Cheese's is a strange old thing, one I've only seen once, but that was enough. Recently, the chain decided that rats are trendy rats, but in some ways they remain old: in a recent viral TikTok (via Ars Technica), a Chuck E. Cheese employee called Stephen Coonrod used a floppy disk to show these animatronics and shows how he makes them dance.

Coonrod holds up to 1.44 MB of data, 3.5-inch floppy disks stamped with the Chuck E. Cheese logo and "Chuck E. Cheese Evergreen Show 2023" on them, and both a floppy drive and various DVD players. They are shown before being loaded into a large computer bank (Cyberstar's rack-mounted system) connected to the system. Not all Chuck E. Cheese stores still use floppies (fewer than 50 of the more than 600 stores worldwide), but in those that do, programs containing dance routines for the animatronic animals have been created in-house, with light shows, background footage, and music played on A DVD is included that plays the light show, background footage, and music.

Coonrod's special setup is called Studio C and features a single animatronic accompanied by four screens and is 25 years old.

There are several things to admire about this video. Primarily, the chaps are wearing period-appropriate mullets and the documentation of a system that will soon become even more of a relic. The Chuck E. Cheese chain is phasing out floppies, and has been phasing out animatronics in general (in favor of costumed performers and screen shows) over the last decade. According to Coonrod, the filming is being done because the place will soon be renovated, and this is sort of the last chance to show how it looks.

Needless to say, this has caused a sense of nostalgia for a generation of Americans who grew up in an era when pizza, video games, and the odd dancing mouse were the genuine evening's entertainment. Some collectors are so enthusiastic about rebuilding their own animatronic sets at home that they are sure to be a sight to behold when they show it to someone on a first date.

This is not as unusual as it may seem. Many older systems, including very important ones, are maintained with archaic technology, both because "if it ain't broke" and because more isolated, self-contained systems have built-in layers of security. I don't think Chuck E. Cheese is worried about North Korean hackers making his mouse dance. [Tom Persky, a floppy disk supplier under contract to Chuck E. Cheese, told Buzzfeed News (opens in new tab)." It's very elegant for what it does."

"It's a very elegant thing to do.

"It's usually easier to keep the old one running because the new setup causes some problems," said one anonymous Chuck E. Cheese employee. So when the Studio C setup is finally discontinued at Chuck E. Cheese's and crying children are chased down the road by shabby robot mice, you know what has happened.