Devs/Publishers you miss (Dead or Acquired)

Let's remember some great developers and publishers that are either no longer with us or bought by big publishers and are no longer able to produce good titles like they used to before.

10. Grin

• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
• Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
• Bionic Commando
• Bionic Commando Rearmed

Status: Dead

9. Acclaim Entertainment

• Turok Series
• Mortal Kombat
• Space Jam
• Double Dragon
• All Star Baseball
• NBA
• Crazy Taxi
• Gladiator
• The Simpsons

Status: Dead

8. Big Huge Games

• Rise of Nation Series

Status: Dead

7. Westwood Studios

• Eye of the Beholder
• The Legend of Kyrandia
• Dune II
• Lands of Lore series
• Command and Conquer series

Status: Killed by EA

6. Rare Ltd

• Donkey Kong Country
• Banjo-Kazooie
• Conker
• GoldenEye 007
• Perfect Dark.
• Star Fox Adventures
• Kameo: Elements of Power
• Killer Instinct
• R.C. Pro-Am or Diddy Kong Racing
• Battletoads
• Captain Skyhawk
• Kinect sports

Status: Bought by Microsoft

5. Massive Entertainment

• Ground Control Series
• World in Conflict
• Far Cry 3
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations
• Tom Clancy's The Division

Status: Bought by Ubisoft

4. Looking Glass Studio

• Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds
• System Shock
• Flight Unlimited
• Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
• British Open Championship Golf
• Flight Unlimited 2
• Thief: The Dark Project
• Command & Conquer (N64)
• System Shock 2
• Flight Unlimited 3
• Destruction Derby 64
• Thief II: The Metal Age
• Jane's Attack Squadron

Status: Dead

3. Origin Systems

• Ultima series
• Wing Commander series
• Crusader series
• Strike Commander
• System Shock
• Wings of Glory

Status: Killed by EA

2. THQ

• Saints Row series
• Darksiders series
• Company of Heroes series
• WWE series
• Homefront series
• Destroy All Humans! series
• Warhammer 40,000 series
• Red Faction series
• MX vs. ATV series
• South Park: The Stick of Truth

Status: Dead

1. Sierra Entertainment

• Metal Arms: Glitch in the System
• King's Quest series
• Space Quest series
• Leisure Suit Larry series
• The Adventures of Willy Beamish
• Shivers series
• Gabriel Knight series
• Phantasmagoria series
• Quest for Glory series
• Police Quest and SWAT series
• Half-Life series
• Counter-Strike series
• The Incredible Machine series
• Gold Rush!
• Crossfire
• Pharaoh series
• Homeworld series
• Lighthouse: The Dark Being
• F.E.A.R.
• World in Conflict

Status: Died after Activision merging with Vivendi Games. Recently revived and now owned by Activision. They've yet to prove themselves under Activision but hopes aren't high.

.

List the name of devs or publishers that you miss and also list their games.

Ensemble Studios. It's terrible that Microsoft closed them down. Age of Empires has gone to hell.

I miss Age of Empires series.

I sure miss Rareware in their Nintendo days. I also miss Sony Liverpool. They knew how to put a game together when they wanted.

Devs:

-Eighting (Unknown; haven't heard anything interesting from them since TvsC) - Naruto: Clash of Ninja, Zatch Bell! Mamodo Battles, Tatsunoko vs Capcom

-Eurocom Entertainment (Dead) - Nightfire (consoles), TWINE (N64), Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (GC/PS2/XBOX), GE 2010 (Wii/360/PS3)

-Rare (owned by MS) - Goldeneye (N64), Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini (which I got recently; still never been released on XBLA), DKC (which is doing well in Retro's hands), Killer Instinct, Banjo

-Raven Software (Technically still alive, but may as well be dead) - Their JK games JO and JA. Man...

-Factor 5 (Dead) - Rogue Squadron (hopefully Disney commissions a team of ex-F5 devs to port RS II and III to PC one day, GOG got the first one)

-Maxis (may as well be dead) - SimCity, The Sims

-Free Radical (merged with Crytek) - TimeSplitters, Second Sight

Publishers:

-Lucasarts (Dead; bought by Disney)

-Midway (Dead; bought by WB)

As far as I know, EA closed one of the studio, while main Maxis studio is still working (I could be wrong). As for Raven Software, if I'm not mistaken these guys also developed Soldier of Fortune right? If so, then yeah,,, that sucks because I loved SOF.

LucasArts? Bashing my head against wall. How could I forget to list them?

Actually, did a fact check and Raven is still around, but like Maxis (let's be honest here), they fall under the "may as well be dead" category. My apologies.

I'll make a top 5 of studios I miss the most:

1) Ensemble Studios

2) Rare

3) Big Huge Games

4) Westwood

5) Maxis

No prob. We haven't heard anything new from those guys in a long time anyways.

Free Radical's acquisition by Crytek pisses me off to no end.

And Cevat Yerli's teasing of the Timesplitters collection was just downright despicable.

1. Strategic Simulations, Inc.
   • Dark Sun
   • Gold Box D&D ( Pool of Radiance, Death Knights of Krynn, etc.)
   • Eye of the Beholder series
   • Ravenloft
2. Ritual Entertainment
   • SiN
   • SiN Episodes
   • Star Trek Elite Force 2
   • Quake: Scourge of Armagon
3. Sir-Tech
   • Wizardry Series ('Nuff said)
4. Psygnosis
   • Shadow of the Beast
   • Agony
   • Hired Guns
   • Lemmings
5. Valkyrie Studios
   • Septerra Core

In no particular order

1) Digital Anvil - Starlancer, Freelancer, Killed by Microsoft @Cloud_imperium Surprised you missed this one mate

2) Looking Glass

3) Westwood

4) Origin

5) Lucasarts

In a way though, both Digital Anvil and Origin are alive (more so DA) and reincarnated in the form of Cloud Imperium Games (Star Citizen) so all is not lost :)

When IO Interactive wasn't interested in just making Hitman games. When Capcom wasn't just interested in making Resident Evil, as in, I want Shadow of Rome.

Thought about including Digital Anvil. Hopefully CIG will be new Origin Systems. IMO, they used to be most important PC devs of 90s who always pushed the hardware with their every game.

Raven Software: Unless we see an indie game that explicitly says that it's from the creator of Hexen, Heretic, Soldier of Fortune and/or Jedi Academy, I'm going to assume that they sold their souls to Activision.

Surprised that Interplay didn't get a mention yet

Eidos Interactive

They had their fair share of problems, but when when they shined, man did they shine.

They're responsible for bringing me some of my favorite games of the 90s

Let's hope Square Enix will live up to the legacy Eidos left behind.

@verbalfilth: I thought Eidos is still alive? Didn't they post concept art for what appears to be a current gen Deus Ex?

RIP Irrational Games

.

@Basinboy: Didn't Levine say that he shaved his dev team to work on smaller, replayable games? Yes, that description makes me want Freedom Force even more ;-;

LucasArts, Ensemble, Technosoft, Team Andromeda, Amusement Vision, SEGA Technical Institute, Raven Software, Factor 5, Totally Games, Compile, etc.

Bullfrog

Ritual

Ion Storm

3D Realms

Irrational itself no longer exists. Some of the staff (less than 20) were retained and now are with Levine working on smaller, entrepreneurial projects but it doesn't appear that they'll go by the old studio name.

Oh and I missed this dev:

Pandemic Studios - Namely for Star Wars: Battlefront II (never played I, but I just picked that up for PS2 at the thrift store I work at). They also did a decent Clone Wars game I remember playing on the Original XBOX, which I also recently bought for GameCube

Eidos guys are still around if I'm not mistaken.

1. Iguana Entertainment, 2. Bizarre Creations, 3. Factor 5, 4. Lucasarts, 5. Sunsoft

Clover Studios arm of Capcom. Capcom's decision to dissolve that segment in 2006 was probably the beginning of their painstakingly slow downfall. Clover Studios heads went on to create Seeds Inc which later became Platinum Games, who I'm a fan of. It might not have gotten much discussion in the gaming media, but they likely didn't make a new company without headhunting the best people at Capcom, probably nabbing the best artists, programmers, basically the cream of the crap who probably developed years of successful working synergy responsible for much of Capcom's success. The end result was almost immediately noticeable given how from that point onward Capcom's games seemed to lack a certain level of polish and quality assurance and overall bad game design. It also seemed to me they tried to hide this by focusing on game re-releases.

Clover Studios. Pre Assassins Creed Ubisoft. Nintendo era Rare (dear god I miss you). THQ.

Lolsoft have become such a joke now. They were great until 2007.

Yeah I miss these guys

Data East. I played the hell out of Karate Champ, Bad Dudes, and Karnov.

I really, really miss Capcom, Konami, Enix and Squaresoft from the 90s and early 2000s. I also miss old Bioware and Blizzard. Going really old-school, I miss Vic Tokai and Technos Japan.

@Cloud_imperium: So much yes. They were at the time (from 2002-2006) the company I dreamed of working for, they were innovative and trying new things. Then Assassins Creed joined the bunch and brought everything down. I think the annualization of many of their games is the downfall, it is no longer about quality with Ubisoft but quantity.

Ensemble.

I blame COD. Everyone wants to earn money faster without taking risks now, after seeing the success of that franchise. Lolsoft has a lot of great IPs and very talented developers but sadly they are wasting their talent on yearly rehashes and re-skins. Take Massive Entertainment for example, the guys who made Ground Control series and World in Conflict are now used to assist them in Ass Greed and Far Cry games.

Tom Clancy's The Division on other hand was Massive Entertainment's project, it was supposed to be a full fledged PC MMO but Ubisoft forced them to dumb it down and turn it into third person online action shooter few months before the initial announcement (you can google the interview). Devs said that was one of the reasons why they didn't announce PC version during E3 because they had to go back to drawing board. Such a waste of talent.

@Cloud_imperium: I blame COD as well and it honestly disturbs me that some companies who used to thrive on innovation are the least innovative around nowadays. As for The Division that is just shitty, straight up. The fact that the developers dream had to be broken down to lesser ideas due to Ubisoft stepping in is heartbreaking. Damn Ubisoft. I used to love you like no other.

Man, I might be naive on this, but i'm still hoping for Rare to strike gold on Xbox One now that Phil spencer is in charge. I'm halfway expecting a banjo threeie trailer this e3 :/ or at least some news. People say Rare has gone to hell, but -

Grabbed by the ghoulies was a fun (though admittedly repetitive), well made graphically stunning game (a theme with rareware games)

Kameo was great

Viva pinata games are the only *sim* games I even care about

Nuts and bolts was cool (though it was a cruel tease)

The talent at Rare is there, a lot of veterans are still there, including the creator of Banjo kazooie, a good composer and that same crazy programming talent.

---

As for developers that have gone under, smilebit (jet set radio, panzer dragoon orta, gunvalkyrie) and team Andromeda - Panzer Dragoon - really hurts. I want a new jet set and panzer dragoon so bad...

Beyond that, it sucks that Radical went under - hulk ultimate destruction, prototype.

Yeah, ubisoft has fallen low.

Michel Ancel is a shine in that dark hole though.

Troika.

I don't think we'll ever see another game set in the world of darkness. Bloodlines was the last hurrah.

Microprose

Falcon 4.0

Mechwarrior 3

European Air War

1942: Pacific Air War

Task Force: 1942

Rare. They were so goddamn good.