Pinto Flare was created circa 1968 by an unknown designer for Franklin Photolettering.
It's an example of an interlock font, where parts of the letters extend above or below the adjacent letters. The interlock style was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. (The example below on the left is Pinto Flare, while the one on the right is another interlock font, Safari.)
By far the most famous use of Pinto Flare was in the The Price is Right. The show adopted Pinto Flare in 1972, back when interlock fonts were popular, and kept it long after they had fallen out of fashion. Younger generations, who didn't remember the 70s, started to see Pinto Flare simply as "the Price is Right font".
In 2000, Ray Larabie was working as an artist for Rockstar Games, and worked on projects like Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, but in his spare time he made fonts. He made a font based on the Price is Right logo called Pricedown, since no digital version of Pinto Flare existed.
Rockstar ended up using Pricedown as the font for Grand Theft Auto III, apparently unaware that it was created by one of their employees -- they just picked it because it was available for free on the internet.
Pricedown was kept for all subsequent games in the GTA series, and thus has transitioned from being "the Price is Right font" to "the GTA font" for a lot of people.
Fonts In Use has more about Pinto Flare and Pricedown.
