Eleven PC Game Studios Gone But Not Forgotten

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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PC World is feeling a bit nostalgic this week with the demise of LucasArts at the hand of new owner Disney. They put together a slide show of eleven companies best known works that have passed on. RIP old friends, you are gone but will not be forgotten.:cool:
 
So many good ones gone ... miss Black Isle and Sir Tek even though neither are on the list ... also miss pieces of studios that were released (Blizzard North comes to mind) :(
 
Sierra Online also released Ultima II. I didn't realize that OSI was sold to EA in '92.

I think my lasting memory of Sierra is not about gaming at all. It was the early 90's near Christmas, and people were saying Happy/Merry Xmas and Ken Williams got upset because they were using X instead of Christ (me thinks he didn't know X translates, more or less, to Christ). It was around the time they changed the interface for the Kings Quest series. Everyone was outraged that they let people select a phrase to say.

OSI is always gonna be Ultima, Wing Commander and Privateer for me, but they had their stinkers. Even Wikipedia doesn't remember just how unplayable Pacific Strike was (so bad that OSi eventually pulled it from the market). If a game came out like that today and they didn't fix it, the lawyers would have rightly sued. There just wasn't enough gamers to justify it in back then and OSI/EA got off without paying anything, AFAIK.
 
BladeVenom said:
Microprose and SSI should be on that list.
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I can't believe that Microprose didn't even get a mention. Just about every game that came out of this company is gold. Bill Stealey and Sid Meier. Enough said.

I think my gaming progression was Origin (Ultima Series), Microprose (still have the Railroad Tycoon box), SSI, and then FPS (Doom and Duke Nukem). Good times.

That reminds me, Koei games. I think they're still around though.
 
MicroProse really deserved a mention. I bought almost anything they published and was rarely disappointed. And I would always mail in the registration cards from their games and they would actually mail me floppies when the game was updated. I never got that kind of service from any other publisher.
 
It makes me sad, that Legend of Kyrandia was not mentioned with Westwood's name.

At least the Space Quest and King's Quest games were mentioned. Those are awesome.
 
kbrickley said:
So many good ones gone ... miss Black Isle and Sir Tek even though neither are on the list ... also miss pieces of studios that were released (Blizzard North comes to mind) :(
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The people behind Black Isle studios are mostly together. They formed Obsidian and made Fallout New Vegas.
 
Gabriel said:
Origin Systems and Looking Glass Studios :(
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My wife and I are pretty annoyed about Looking Glass studios being disbanded. I could only imagine how the Thief series would look today if Looking Glass was still kicking around.

And about the Ion Storm comments, am I the ONLY one that enjoyed Anachronox?
 
New World Computing, 3DO, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 :(

At least HOMM3 is still being supported with mods.
 
Gordo74 said:
New World Computing, 3DO, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 :(

At least HOMM3 is still being supported with mods.
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Aww crap, that's right. I forgot they were on that list.

I preferred Heroes of Might and Magic 2, but honestly I found HOMM 5 to be pretty good too, so I don't notice the developers being gone as much as I would have thought.
 
Yeah a few of those were classic companies, Bullfrog now just a memory in EA somewhere, Origin got recycled from a game legend into a POS DRM utility...I mean an awesome game app (not really, it's a POS).

I remember SSI became part of Interplay, or Infrogrammes, I know Infrogrammes became part of Atari, but I don't remember what happened to Interplay?

Sierra made some great games (no Leisure Suit Larry is not, certainly a forgetful series award at best) original FEAR was great, Kings Quest/Space Quest is a good series.
 
Outamyhead said:
Yeah a few of those were classic companies, Bullfrog now just a memory in EA somewhere, Origin got recycled from a game legend into a POS DRM utility...I mean an awesome game app (not really, it's a POS).

I remember SSI became part of Interplay, or Infrogrammes, I know Infrogrammes became part of Atari, but I don't remember what happened to Interplay?

Sierra made some great games (no Leisure Suit Larry is not, certainly a forgetful series award at best) original FEAR was great, Kings Quest/Space Quest is a good series.
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Infrogrames bought the name Atari and assumed the facade of the company. At the time, Atari was not in position to buy anything.

Hell, I remember a time when I could install a dozen Sierra games and have all the big genres covered. That was some time ago.
 
the original might & magic series was and is the greatest rpg game ever created. PERIOD
it wasn't about the graphics it was about the immersion and story.
 
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