Know Your Gaming Roots

[EvilYoshi]

This was a thumping good read. Too bad it was only two pages. Why, if you were to churn out several more articles delving into history with a financial/video-game twist I would read it.

...you could make a new segment out of it or something.

 

[Blind Sight]

EA's got a similar history to Activision, they were the guys in the past claiming to be 'video game artists'. Bob Dylan's 'the times they are a changin' seems to be the video game industry's theme song.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Wooo! I remember them all! Oh. That means I'm old. Damnnit.

 

[Tharticus]

Westwood. I liked their RTS when I was a kid. Then the entire C&C franchise went kaput when EA closed Westwood.

 

[Taawus]

Oh good days... good days.

 

[DaxStrife]

Low on cash after the lawsuit, they were bought up by an investment group run by... guess who. They filed chapter 11, renamed themselves again, restructured the company, moved the company, and then began buying up other companies.

The description there brings to mind the image of a parasitic organism (Kotick in this case) finding a wounded animal, infecting it, and then using the poor creature to spread itself to others.
Tell me I'm not the only one thinking this.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

How about Ashby Computers and Graphics Ltd. (ACG) who published as Ultimate: Play the Game? (Sabrewulf, Nightlore, Alien8) who became Rare(Killer Instinct) who were amalgamated into Microsoft.(Something called Windows)

Then there was Gremlin Graphics (Thing on a Spring, Monty on the Run, Zool) who absorbed DMA Design (Grand Theft Auto, Lemmings) and were absorbed by Infogrammes (Unreal Tournament) which had also absorbed Epic Games and Digital Interactive (Unreal), as well as Ocean(Almost any good C64 game), Accolade, Beam Software, Hasbro and Atari....and then...uh...seriously, read up on it. Infogrammes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infogrames] was bedhopping like only the French can.(!)

Then there was Codemasters (Dizzy) that came from Mastertronic (The Last V8) and went on to be... Codemasters (Lord of the Rings Online, Colin Mcrae's Rally)

 

[Starke]

I know every single one of these tales of old. Makes me feel good inside

Its hard to believe that Activision used to put out the most innovative, interesting, and fun games on the market.

I still play Pitfall from time to time...

Yeah, I still play Battlezone every now and then, it's sad to see how much they've lost.

It's disturbing to see how little they have actually produced since Kotick took over. All they have done is literally buy existing studios and put them on the sequel tredmil. They have done NO IP creation. NONE.

[PROTOTYPE]? That's the only I can remember right now. Surely there must be more...

Singularity, Blur (I guess), Timeshift, Gun (though that might be from before Kotick was there...)...

 

[Sgt Pepper]

I remember Microprose more for their sim games in the 80s - F15 I think it was and that stealth bomber one. I also remember they did a game where you were a US ranger.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

stop making me feel old

oooh oooh, do Origin and SSI and Infocom next!

 

[Starke]

Low on cash after the lawsuit, they were bought up by an investment group run by... guess who. They filed chapter 11, renamed themselves again, restructured the company, moved the company, and then began buying up other companies.

The description there brings to mind the image of a parasitic organism (Kotick in this case) finding a wounded animal, infecting it, and then using the poor creature to spread itself to others.
Tell me I'm not the only one thinking this.

As near as I can tell, it was something to do with ROM cartridges. It?s a little hard to parse out because it was being written by lawyers and not programmers, but I think Activision was producing cartridges for a proprietary console format without authorization.

What?s weird is the other party was Magnavox. It looks like Magnavox either held a patent for a ROM cartridge format (and interface), or were the exclusive licensee of that format. This is weird because I don?t remember Magnavox being involved in consoles in ?88.

Fake edit: It's possible that Magnavox had a patent on non-game ROM cartridges at that time, but that sounds weird as well.

 

[xunjez]

No mention of Westwood would be complete to me without mention of the Kyrandia series. Not that they were genre creating, but I loved them. I miss you Malcolm!!!!!!!

 

[Viik]

Looking Glass Studious are my heroes forever. They made my favorite games (Thief 2 wasn't beat by any other game for me untill now) and had a hardcore tech behind their games at that moment. For example, AI that was developed in that time for Thief is still one of the most complex and basically not seen in nowaday games. System Shock was a revolution in game industry, nobody had so much features and deep gameplay for sort of FPS game.

I'm missing SirTech, they made my favorite strategy\rpg for all time - Jagged Alliance 2. There are no game with so many features out there at the moment.

 

[Kron_the_mad wants to be deleted]

I miss Bullfrog so much. Great article, made me all nostalgic.

really?! no mention of the 1st games???
like space war and tennis for two developed on the oscilloscope. The first computer games were not by major dedicated games developers so they get no mention at all.
or the fact that all rpg and strategy games owe their very existence to table top war simulations with miniatures?

The article is about defunct and forgotten studios, and what they did for the industry, not where video games come from. There are tons of articles on that note.
And on the note of the relevance to this article of Tabletop Wargaming; Did you know they were invented HG Wells?! And he isn't in the article either???

I miss bulllfrog too, also they still owe the world dungeon keeper 3!

The original article doesn't specifically state that it's about defunct companies but more landmark games and developers from the early days of gaming. You can't really get more landmark than being the 1st. so theres a whole period from the 60s' tpo the 80s' thats being ommited.

What about the 1st decent single player title even? thats important as early prototypes were limited to a basic competitive multiplayer as the resources and complexity of writing a challenging AI were a real hurdle back then. imagine a world with no single player computer games!

Picking out examples without making the article monsterously long wouldn't be too hard as there wasn't the saturation of different I.P.s figuring out the original titles and devs might be a little trickier..

 

[Something Amyss]

I didn't know the whole Activision story. Weird.

 

[Engarde]

Oh Westwood, I still miss you. Red Alert 2 was my favourite rts ever, and I still play it now and again with my older brother. Though I do not know to many others from the article....I guess I am too young.

 

[thiosk]

This is like the third article I've read on the escapist today that involved some mention of kids getting of lawns.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

It's sad how few people can recall a lot of these old hat names. Or can even see Activision as anything more than Bobby Kotick's satanic institution that constantly screws the industry.

Activision did some damn good games back in '84.

 

[Andronicus]

If only my history teacher in high school was as awesome as Shamus...

I demand more history lectures!!

 

[RandV80]

Yah I still remember EA back in the 16-bit days being an outstanding developer that always put a little extra detail into their games. I'm guessing they must have gotten rich off their sports franchises and turned evil from there.

For the missing companies, Interplay is definately #1 for me. Not just for the RPG's, they made other quality titles like Die by the Sword and Carmageddon. It always bugs me to see how big a franchise Grand Theft Auto has become while Carmageddon remains forgotton. I don't want to be some stupid thug or gangsta, just give me an overpowered car and let me at that over the top carnage on those big open ended maps!