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| If companies are legally considered "people", then I guess they're a species capable of asexual reproduction. |
However, the amusing thing about this is that there was partly a reason for why Activision, which was founded by ex-Atari programmers, used the name that it did (& still does, to this day): Alphabetic Supremacy. In short, "Activision" would appear before "Atari" when organized in alphabetical order, thereby somehow implying that it was inherently superior to its "father", and when various people from Activision left to form their own respective video game companies throughout the 80s... they did the same exact thing & chose names that would put them before any of their fellow Activision progeny, i.e. Atari's "granchildren". So, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Atari (& because I was inspired by the stellar Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration collection that recently came out), let's take a general overview of how Atari spawned a rebellious child of its own, and how that child then later gave Atari a trio of grandchildren (& how that last one ruined the entire naming game *side-eyes Acclaim*).
Naturally, we start off with the "father" of this bizarre little "family": Atari, Inc. Named after a situation in Go in which a player can capture at least one stone from their opponent in their next turn, Atari was brazenly unabashed in how the company would often not actually be the first one to do something in gaming (Computer Space was based on Spacewar!, Pong was inspired by Ralph Baer & Magnavox's Odyssey, the Fairchild Channel F did cartridge-based console gaming before the 2600, etc.), but there was no doubt that Atari's end products often wound up being the better (or, at the very least, more approachable) option. A major reason for that was obviously due to Atari managing to hire excellent & outstanding programmers/designers, whether it was Al Alcorn making Pong more than just a basic training exercise, Steve Jobs (with all the "help" of Steve Wozniak) making Breakout into a remarkably simple chip layout (only ~30 chips, instead of the 150+ that other Atari games utilized!), or the wide variety of people who worked on 2600 games throughout that console's entire life.
However, one thing Atari was not good at was properly crediting those very people who made the games & hardware in any public fashion, and it wasn't any better when Nolan Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 (followed by Bushnell's departure in 1978). To the higher ups, especially someone like Ray Kassar, the actual people making the games, some of which could sell literal millions of copies on the 2600, were nothing more than "high-strung prima donnas" who were nothing more than faceless cogs of the machine; when Rob Fulop's 2600 port of Missile Command sold over 2.5 million copies, his reward was a literal coupon for "one free turkey". It's why Warren Robinett hid his self-acknowledgement into 1980's Adventure, creating one of the earliest Easter eggs in video games, before leaving Atari in 1979, prior to the game's release! (you can't punish someone who doesn't work there anymore) At this point in time, video games were (mostly) being made by literal one-person teams, and yet Atari still refused to properly give these individuals their due credit, whether it was public acknowledgment or at least some sort of actual cash bonus for making a game that sold literal millions; truly, some video game companies have learned little to nothing in 50 years.
For four specific individuals, enough was enough... and it was time for them to stand up for themselves.
In early 1979, Atari sent out a company-wide memo listing the best-selling cartridges of 1978, in an attempt to guide their "engineers" towards certain game concepts. David Crane (Outlaw, Canyon Bomber), Alan Miller (Surround, Basketball), Bob Whitehead (Home Run, Football), & Larry Kaplan (Street Racer, Brain Games), four of the 35 people making 2600 games at Atari, noticed that their games, combined, accounted for 60% of Atari's sales in 1978, with Crane himself realizing that his games alone brought in over $20 million dollars (or ~$91.4 million, today!), while his salary was only around $20,000. That May, the "Gang of Four" (as they eventually were called, due to their vocal complaints about this lack of recognition) had a meeting with Ray Kassar to demand that Atari start treating its game designers like how a record label treats its musicians, i.e. royalties & their names on the products they make, only for Kassar to call them "towel designers" & claim that "anybody can do a cartridge". After that meeting, these four men had enough & with the advice of their attorney Jim Levy went on to found Activision on October 1, 1979; Larry Kaplan technically isn't a co-founder, as he initially didn't like the starting plan, but joined up in December. Obviously feeling the pressure, Atari actually went as far as suing Activision. claiming stolen trade secrets & breaking NDAs, but the end result was a settlement in 1982 in which Activision would pay royalties to Atari, but in doing so third-party development was effectively codified as a viable business strategy.
With Jim Levy as CEO, Activision's M.O. was to treat game designers as rock stars, with each game's manual including a short biography of the person who made it, as well as a copy of their signature; Apple's Trip Hawkins would take this concept even further when he founded Electronic Arts in 1982. But what we're here for, first & foremost, is the name of the company itself: Why "Activision"? While it wasn't the first name the group thought of (they initially did operate as "Computer Arts, Inc." for a very short time, & even considered "VSync, Inc."), Jim Levy's portmanteau of "active" & "television" (a.k.a. "a video game") just had the best sound to it, and while the co-founders have mentioned the whole "it appears before Atari, thereby implying superiority" thing in interviews, it really does feel like it was more of an amusing coincidence than anything directly intentional; could be both, though. Regardless, Activision quickly established itself as the home for some of the 2600's best games, and when people think of the most iconic Atari 2600 games ever made, Activision's games tend to be some of the very first ones that come to mind. Activision's focus on properly crediting the people who make the games would also result in Atari eventually relenting & giving proper acknowledgement to its staff, though in nowhere near as notable a fashion & usually under the guise of "By all means, we encourage all of you to sneak your names in as Easter eggs!". However, the proliferation of third-parties that Activision inspired (& Atari inadvertently encouraged via the lawsuit), combined with all of the hardware that was being sold to play games on at the time, helped bring about a financial disaster that nearly killed home video games entirely. At least, that was how it was in North America, as Europe was more infatuated with home micro-computers at the time, while Japan had its own market of home consoles, with Nintendo only on the verge of launching the Famicom by this point; to Japan, "Atari Shock" was just a thing that happened. Also, while Ray Kassar was technically right about how "anybody can do a cartridge", that wasn't exactly a good thing.
"The Crash" was a major hit to the entire American console industry, and while Activision managed to survive it by having spread out to releasing games on home computers, it still posted an $18 million loss for 1984. This resulted in a large devaluation of company stock (it went public in June of 1983), prompting two of the co-founders to leave & build their own company.
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| On the right you'll see Bob Whitehead: Master of the Moustache. |
While the Crash of '83 hurt the seeming viability of home consoles & (to a slightly smaller extent) arcades in North America, a market that was affected in little-to-no way was the home computer market, which had started seeing its first boom with the release of machines like the Apple II, Tandy TRS-80 "CoCo" Color Computer, Commodore's VIC-20 & C64, Atari's first 8-bit computers, & the original IBM 5150 "PC". Though these machines' usefulness in the home for non-gaming purposes were obviously a major part of the marketing to appeal to adults who don't play video games, some of these machines were also just as much marketed towards their ability to play games, and they were much more powerful than the home consoles on the market at the time. Two game designers who found themselves enthralled with computer game development were Activision co-founders Alan Miller & Bob Whitehead, so when their stocks in the company were devalued due to "The Crash", they formed their own studio in 1984, Accolade. The name was chosen because it appeared alphabetically before both its "father" Activision & "grandfather" Atari, in a fun little wink & nod to (part of) the reason why Activision chose its own name; obviously, there was no ill will this time around.
Naturally, Accolade got its start making games for PCs and would quickly make a name for itself with the release of HardBall! in 1985. Designed by Whitehead (his penultimate video game, before leaving the industry entirely after 1987's 4th & Inches, due to a distaste in how "dark & derivative" gaming had become), HardBall! was one of the first baseball video games to replicate the behind-the-pitcher camera angle that was common in actual MLB broadcasts, and its fusion of arcade gameplay with managerial options made it a smash hit, creating a franchise that would run for six entries until 1999. Accolade would also be the original home for the long-running Test Drive series of racing games, publishing the first seven entries up through 1998, as well as being the publisher for the cult-classic Star Control trilogy & the infamous Bubsy series during the 90s. Probably Accolade's biggest contribution to gaming, though, would actually be the 1992 lawsuit Sega filed against it, due to Accolade having reverse-engineered Genesis software code so that it could release games for the console without becoming a licensed developer (starting with Ishido: The Way of Stones in 1990), due to Alan Miller not agreeing with the terms Sega enforced. Even after Sega implemented the Trademark Security System/TMSS code into later versions of the Genesis, to prevent them from playing Accolade games, Accolade managed to identify where that code was & implemented it into later releases, resulting in the lawsuit.
While Sega won the initial decision, the Ninth Circuit for Appeals actually reversed the decision in favor of Accolade, stating that Accolade's use of reverse-engineering was actually done under fair use, & that violations of Sega's trademarks were actually Sega's own fault, with Sega & Accolade eventually agreeing to a settlement that resulted in Accolade being an officially licensed developer. Still, Miller revealed that the whole ordeal cost Accolade "somewhere between $15 million and $25 million", and he'd eventually leave Accolade in 1994. You probably didn't think I'd be bringing up two different lawsuits during this article, so don't you feel silly now? No, I didn't think so.
Meanwhile, back at Activision, the company had shifted over to PC game development in an effort to survive "The Crash", with CEO & co-founder Jim Levy doing everything he could to keep finances in check. One thing Levy did to help bolster things was broker a deal to acquire Infocom, creator of the legendary Zork Series of text adventure games for PCs, which itself wasn't doing too well. While Levy was a big fan of Infocom's games, Activision's board wound up ousting Levy from power, replacing him with Bruce Davis, who had previously run fellow ex-Atari-formed third-party Imagic during that company's dying days; Activision would go on to purchase the rights to most of Imagic's catalog. Unlike Levy, though, Davis absolutely hated the Infocom purchase & did everything he could to make it a mess, even going as far as considering a lawsuit to recover the costs from Infocom's shareholders! Someone who didn't like the way Bruce Davis handled business was Activision co-founder David Crane, who at this point was the last man standing from the "Gang of Four", as Larry Kaplan had left in 1982. Along with Garry Kitchen (Keystone Kapers), his brother Dan Kitchen (Crackpots), Alex DeMeo, & John Van Ryzin (H.E.R.O.), Crane would decide to leave Activision & form their own company in 1986, naming it Absolute Entertainment, because "Ab" appears before "Ac" & "At" alphabetically; at this point, it was obviously just a running gag.
However, unlike the prior companies covered, which were all based out of California, Absolute was actually based out of New Jersey, as Activision had opened a NJ branch that allowed East Coast designers to work remotely, using early modems & the like to submit their work if need be. This time around it was David Crane who worked remotely, operating out of his West Coast home, and while Absolute was the publisher, Garry Kitchen & company actually also started an in-house development studio that same year called Imagineering, with the idea being that Imagineering would take work from any & all companies that hired it to make games, not just Absolute. A major reason for this is because, as Kitchen would reveal in Atari 50, while the Crash of '83 affected the industry itself, it wasn't really known to the public all that much, so despite being nearly a decade old, there were still people who went to their local Toys "R" Us looking for new Atari 2600 games to buy in the latter half of the 80s; Atari would revive the 2600 as a budget gaming line in 1986, as well. Seeing a market that could still be served, Imagineering wound up starting off making 2600 (& the occasional 7800) ports of games like Capcom's Commando, Technos Japan's Double Dragon, Irem's Kung-Fu Master, & SNK's Ikari Warriors, as well as new games like River Raid II for Activision or Sentinel for Atari (a literal light-gun game!), before eventually moving on to the NES & beyond; Absolute also started off publishing some 2600 & 7800 games, too. Easily the most iconic game to come from Absolute & Imagineering would be David Crane's A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia from 1989, a puzzle/platformer for the NES that would receive a sequel on the Game Boy in 1991, followed by maybe Garry Kitchen's BattleTank series (based around the First Gulf War), which saw games released on the NES, SNES, Genesis, & Game Boy up through 1994.
In 1992, Absolute Entertainment would fully absorb Imagineering & start developing games under its own name, and while there's no doubt that Absolute is the smallest name among the five covered here, it still has its own interesting history, & is undeniably a "grandchild" of Atari. This also marks the end of game companies that were formed by actual game developers covered here, as there is still one more "grandchild" to talk about, though since there is no direct through line to Atari at this point I guess you can call this the black sheep of the "family".
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| Yes, what all hardcore video game fans want to see... C-Span, during the 2000 hearing on violence in entertainment. |
Greg Fischbach has never developed a video game himself. Instead, he first worked as an attorney representing musicians & record labels, before eventually serving as President of Activision International from 1983 to 1986, during which he worked alongside two men named Robert Holmes & Jim Scoroposki. Fischbach would then leave Activision to become President of RCA Records International, only to be left jobless when Bertelsmann acquired RCA Records, creating BMG. Meeting back up with Scoroposki, the two decided to re-enter the video games industry, & with Holmes the three founded Acclaim Entertainment in 1987. Despite not being any of the "Gang of Four", Acclaim's co-founders seemingly knew of the amusing little naming practice that had become tradition, so supposedly the name "Acclaim" was chosen because it was alphabetically above Atari, Activision, & Accolade... though it was NOT alphabetically above Absolute Entertainment, despite that company being founded a year prior, thereby ruining the gag! Also, even more hilariously, "Acclaim" was a name that Alan Miller & Bob Whitehead had originally considered using for their own company, before going with Accolade, so it accidentally(?) makes it seem like Fischbach & Co. couldn't come up with a name for their company on their own; even something like "Above All Entertainment" would have worked.
Out of all the companies seen in this "family", Acclaim might honestly be the most infamous of them all, and that's mainly because of the reputation it quickly found itself. Simply put, & fitting for a company founded by "businessmen" & not developers, Acclaim was all about licenses, whether it was simply publishing games developed by other companies (it published some of the earliest console efforts by Rare & Square in North America), or simply getting the rights to publish games based on licensed properties. The latter is especially what Acclaim became known for early on, having its logo associated with the likes of Rambo, Airwolf, WWF, Knight Rider, & The Simpsons, all on the NES. During the 90s, Acclaim would enter a long-term partnership with Midway, which allowed Acclaim to publish console & handheld ports of games like Smash TV, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, & Revolution X, though this also resulted in Acclaim actually taking the rights to NBA Jam away from Midway after 1994. In fact, Acclaim was releasing so many games that it had to start up shell companies to act as labels so that it could get around restrictions that Nintendo & Sega enforced, resulting in LJN's second life as a (mostly) shovelware publisher for Nintendo's hardware, while Flying Edge & Arena had a (somewhat) better reputation over on Sega's platforms. In the mid-90s Acclaim became even bigger, acquiring Sculptured Software, Iguana Entertainment, & Probe Entertainment, while also acquiring Valiant Comics & its catalog; yes, "Acclaim Comics" was in fact a thing.
The end result of all of this was a massive catalog of games that was mixed, to say the least. For every really cool and/or good release (Psychic Force, Turok, Alien Trilogy, D, Darius Gaiden, Forsaken, RC de Go!, Burnout 1 & 2, Steel Empire, Galactic Attack, Bust-A-Move, etc.), there was seemingly two or three disappointing and/or terrible releases (Street Fighter: The Movie [console], College Slam, the 3D NBA Jam games, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, South Park, NFL Quarterback Club, Spirit of Speed 1937, etc.). Also, Acclaim's later attempts at attention, like BMX XXX (just... the entire thing) or announcing plans to advertise Shadow Man: 2econd Coming on actual tombstones, were just as infamous & in poor taste as they sound. That being said, Greg Fischbach himself is also a co-founder of both the ESA & ESRB, having served as Chairman for two years & he served on the board until 2004, so it's obvious that the man did care about video games & wanted to keep them as a self-regulated product. As a "grandchild" of Atari, Acclaim can come off a bit like the adopted "red-headed stepchild" of the bunch, due to the fact that its co-founders didn't originate from Atari in any way, but there's no denying the presence the company had, especially during the 90s.
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| Well... at least it isn't 5 out of 5, right? |
So that leaves just one question: Where are they now? The original Atari, Inc. technically stayed around until June 26, 1992, though it had been a non-operating subsidiary of Warner Communications ever since the sale that resulted in Jack Tramiel's console & computer-based Atari Corporation & the arcade-based Atari Games in July of 1984. As for the history of the Atari name/brand itself... it's a goddamn mess (there were three different entities that went by the name "Atari Interactive"!), but all you really need to know is that the current owner, Atari SA, is the former Infogrames & that the brand itself has somehow managed to stay "alive", in one way or another, for the past 50 years. As for Activision, Bruce Davis nearly killed the company by transitioning it into Mediagenic (with "Activision" simply being a gaming label), before Bobby Kotick came in & eventually became CEO, bringing back the original name & transforming the company into the utter giant it is today in the gaming landscape... and, as the saying goes, "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". As for Accolade, the company would eventually be purchased by Infogrames in 1999 as part of the French studio's effort to make itself a presence in North America, before being merged with fellow acquiree GT Interactive to become Infogrames, Inc. in October of 2000. However, during Atari SA/Infogrames' bankruptcy proceedings in 2013 (again, "Atari's" knack for surviving is remarkable), Tommo, Inc. (owner of UFO Interactive) would purchase the rights to the "Accolade" name, before selling it to Chinese company Billionsoft in 2017, though the two companies have since worked together to revive Accolade as a publishing label... for two brand new Bubsy games.
As for Absolute Entertainment, the company would go bankrupt in 1995, with Activision seemingly getting the rights to the company's Atari 2600 catalog (& I would also imagine the 7800 ports, too), as some have been included in various Activision game collections, just like the Imagic catalog. However, the rights to A Boy and His Blob & BattleTank wound up with fellow NJ-based company Majesco Entertainment (which Dan Kitchen worked at as a VP, from 2000 to 2006), with Majesco eventually releasing a remake of Boy developed by WayForward for the Wii in 2009 (& later other platforms), along with a re-release of the NES original on the Wii Virtual Console. Today, Ziggurat Interactive owns the rights to A Boy and His Blob, along with the majority of Majesco's old catalog. Meanwhile, a previously unreleased Game Gear port of Super BattleTank would wind up being the final game ever officially released for the handheld by Majesco in 2001, followed by a Game Boy Advance port of the SNES original being released in 2003 under the title Operation Armored Liberty (&, yes, it was "updated" to take place during the Second Gulf War in the 00s). After Absolute went belly-up, Garry Kitchen & David Crane would start up Skyworks Technologies (later Interactive), which would develop games for handhelds & mobile devices from 1995 to 2009; today, the Kitchen Brothers & David Crane run Audacity Games, which makes new games for the Atari 2600. Finally, Acclaim would go bankrupt on September 1, 2004, while a successor company (Acclaim Games) would only last from 2006 to 2010. Throwback Entertainment would purchase the rights to many of Acclaim's games in 2005, and have since re-released a number of them on PC, while specific rights were eventually sold to We Go Interactive in 2010 (Re-Volt & RC Revenge) & Liquid Media Group in 2018 (mostly licensed property games). As for the Acclaim brand & logo, Collectorvision Games bought the rights to that in 2016.
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50 years after Atari was founded in 1972, the video game industry is just utterly massive in ways that Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney, & Al Alcorn never could have imagined. Meanwhile, it honestly is a bit amazing that Atari's own "child", Activision, has managed to not only survive to this very day without going out of business (though those Mediagenic days got it close!), but is now such a gigantic conglomerate that its potential purchase by Microsoft has become something that (as of this piece) has gotten the FTC looking at it! Accolade's biggest impact is arguably that lawsuit from Sega which has helped define how reverse-engineering applies in terms of fair use, a decision that has apparently been cited in other cases in the decades since. As for Absolute Entertainment, it at least gave us A Boy and His Blob; hey, they can't all be icons of an industry. And then there's Acclaim, which was easily the second-biggest company to be a "Child of Atari", despite its status as such being somewhat tenuous.
Anyway, this is a blog focused primarily on anime & manga, so since I'm on a second-gen gaming kick let's return later this month with a look at what might just be the very first video games released on console that were based on various anime!
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