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52-568: EA Pacific (formerly known as Burst Studios and Westwood Pacific ) was a developer formally owned by Virgin Interactive 's North American operations, and was based in Irvine, California . Burst Studios was beset by production problems during its early years; Virgin Interactive's president of worldwide publishing, Brett W. Sperry , commented in 1997, "The way the Burst studio was structured made

104-431: A US $ 100,000 contract to produce three illustrated text adventures for them. Published in 1984, Mindshadow is loosely based on Robert Ludlum 's Bourne Identity while The Tracer Sanction puts the player in the role of an interplanetary secret agent. Borrowed Time which features a script by Arnie Katz's Subway Software followed in 1985. These adventures built upon work previously done by Fargo; his first game

156-533: A video game developer based in California . When Boone eventually folded, the four got together with investor Chris Wells and, believing they could create a company that was better than Boone, founded Interplay in October 1983. The first projects were non-original and consisted of software conversions and even some military work for Loral Corporation . After negotiations with Activision , Interplay entered

208-463: A PC budget range titled "Just2Play" with Dutch publisher Xing Interactive for the UK and Benelux territories. The range was aimed to be similar to Avalon's White Label range, but with the addition of titles from Xing Interactive. In January 2005, Titus Interactive filed for bankruptcy with €33 million ($ 43.8 million) debt. Avalon France and all of Titus' French operations were closed down immediately, while

260-663: A dispute regarding the Dark Alliance Engine for Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel , Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II , and the GameCube version of the original Dark Alliance . The resolution allowed Interplay to retain the work they had already done using that engine, but not to use it in new work. Bethesda Softworks sued Interplay in 2009, seeking an injunction to stop Interplay from developing Fallout Online and from selling Fallout Trilogy . After several trials spanning almost three years, Interplay gave Bethesda

312-520: A fully-owned subsidiary of Titus Interactive, S.A. The deal was done to simplify their publishing and distribution sides, with Virgin continuing to be Titus and Interplay's exclusive European distributor. On June 11, 2002, Titus announced they had accepted a management buyout of Virgin's Spanish operations; Virgin Interactive España SA, by Virgin's former CEO Tim Chaney along with former Spanish president and founder Paco Encinas. The deal

364-481: A lot of sense on paper, but for a variety of reasons, it wasn't delivering product at the end of the day." Burst Studios was acquired by Electronic Arts together with Westwood Studios and Virgin's North American publishing operations in August 1998. The company was later renamed to Westwood Pacific, under that name, the company developed or co-developed games like Nox and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 . It

416-503: A name for itself as a quality developer of role-playing video games with the three-part series The Bard's Tale (1985–1988), critically acclaimed Wasteland (1988) and Dragon Wars (1989). All of them were published by Electronic Arts . Interplay started publishing its own games, beginning with Neuromancer and Battle Chess , in 1988, and then moved on to publish and distribute games from other companies, while continuing internal game development. In 1995, Interplay published

468-420: A range of several unpopular but arguably necessary decisions to cancel various projects, in order to save the company. In April 2002, the company sold Shiny Entertainment to Infogrames for $ 47 million, which at turn also included a then-upcoming video game based on The Matrix as well as the video game rights to the property transferring over. Due to a low share price, Interplay's shares were delisted from

520-651: A similar partnership. In late 1993, Virgin Interactive spun off a new company, Virgin Sound and Vision, to focus exclusively on CD-based children's and family entertainment. As more media companies became interested in interactive entertainment, Blockbuster Entertainment , then the world's largest video-store chain, acquired 20 percent of Virgin Interactive Entertainment in January 1994. It acquired 75 percent of VIE's stock later in 1994 and purchased

572-499: A successful and critically acclaimed role-playing video game set in a retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic setting. Black Isle Studios , a newly created in-house developer, followed with the sequel, Fallout 2 , in 1998. Another successful subsequent Interplay franchise was Baldur's Gate , a Dungeons & Dragons game that was developed by BioWare and which spawned a successful expansion, sequel and spin-off series. The spin-off series started with Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance ;

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624-643: A year earlier to build on its success at home, though growth exhausted its resources after expanding in Europe and acquiring publisher Melbourne House . Richard Branson stepped in and offered to buy 45 percent of Mastertronic stake, in exchange Mastertronic joined the Virgin Group. The subsequent merger created Virgin Mastertronic Ltd. in 1988 with Alper as its president which enabled Virgin to expand its business reach overseas. Mastertronic had been

676-516: The Redneck Rampage franchise to Vivendi Universal Games for $ 300,000, and in October, licensed the rights to the Fallout franchise to Bethesda Softworks under a three-game deal, while Interplay would retain ownership of the franchise as well as full rights to an MMO title – Fallout Online . By then, Interplay's financial issues began to worsen. In January 2005, Titus Interactive

728-403: The 1990s of media companies, movie studios and telecom firms investing in video game makers to create new forms of entertainment, VIE became part of the entertainment industry after being acquired by media companies Blockbuster and Viacom , who were attracted by its multimedia and CD-ROM -based software development. Being located in close proximity to the thirty-mile zone and having access to

780-827: The Burst Studios development studio, which was renamed to Westwood Pacific by its new owners. The European division though was put out in a majority stake buyout backed by Mark Dyne, who became its chief executive officer in the same year. Tim Chaney, the former managing director was named president. On February 17, 1999, Virgin Interactive announced they had entered into a distribution agreement with Interplay Entertainment , where Interplay would distribute Virgin Interactive's titles in North America and several other territories including South America and Japan, while Virgin Interactive would exclusively distribute Interplay's titles in Europe, folding their own distribution arm in

832-519: The European market. Within the late-1990s, the North American operations were sold to Electronic Arts , while the European division later went under the hands of Interplay Entertainment and Titus Interactive . They soon transitioned exclusively as a distributor and were rebranded by Titus as Avalon Interactive in August 2003, and closed in 2005 following the former's bankruptcy. Currently,

884-591: The Fallout IP to them. In September 2008, several games from Interplay's catalog were re-released on the digital distribution service GOG.com after being unavailable in retail distribution for years. In August 2013, Interplay acquired the remaining rights to the FreeSpace franchise for $ 7,500 after THQ went to bankruptcy court. Interplay is co-publishing, with 3D Realms , a remaster of Xatrix Entertainment's 1999 game Kingpin: Life of Crime , which

936-465: The Gang of Five, the company grew significantly after purchasing budget label Mastertronic in 1987. As Virgin's video game division grew into a multimedia powerhouse, it crossed over to other industries from toys to film to education. To highlight its focus beyond video games and on multimedia, the publisher was renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment in 1993. As result of a growing trend throughout

988-513: The Gang of Five. Early successes included Sorcery and Dan Dare . The company expanded with the acquisition of several smaller publishers, Rabbit Software , New Generation Software and Leisure Genius (publishers of the first officially licensed computer versions of Scrabble , Monopoly and Cluedo ). 1987 marked a turning point for Virgin after its acquisition of struggling distributor Mastertronic . Mastertronic had opened its North American headquarters in Irvine , California just

1040-601: The NASDAQ in 2002 and now trade on the over the counter (OTC) market. The company continued to struggle throughout 2003 following an assortment of poorly-selling console titles. On September 29, 2003, the company was entered into a lawsuit with Vivendi Universal over alleged breaches of their partnership and a failure of payment. This led to Interplay ending their North American distribution deal with Vivendi Universal Games . On December 8, 2003, Interplay closed down Black Isle Studios and laid off their entire staff. The company

1092-458: The UK branch continued to trade as Titus' non-French operations were unaffected. Avalon's UK operations were dissolved by November 2005. This category includes titles that were distributed by Virgin Interactive in European territories. Interplay Entertainment Interplay Entertainment Corp. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Los Angeles . The company

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1144-783: The VIE library and intellectual properties are owned by Interplay Entertainment as a result of its acquisition of Titus. A close affiliate and successor of Spanish origin, Virgin Play , was formed in 2002 from the ashes of former Virgin Interactive's Spanish division and kept operating until it folded in 2009. Nick Alexander formed Virgin Games in 1983 after leaving Thorn EMI . It was headquartered in Portobello Road, London. The firm initially relied on submissions by freelancer developers, but set up its own in-house development team in 1984, known as

1196-463: The Virgin brand, they had developed and published games for major platforms and employed developers , including Westwood Studios co-founder Brett Sperry and Earthworm Jim creators David Perry and Doug TenNapel . Others include video game composer Tommy Tallarico and animators Bill Kroyer and Andy Luckey . Formed as Virgin Games in 1983, and built around a small development team called

1248-555: The Vivendi Universal deal. On September 27, Interplay announced that Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Giants: Citizen Kabuto would become the first titles under the new agreement. On November 29, 2001, BioWare announced that they had ended their partnership with Interplay, citing unpaid royalties and Titus sublicensing distribution to third-parties for the reason. BioWare took Neverwinter Nights with them, with Infogrames purchasing worldwide publishing rights to

1300-587: The company's shares and allow for Interplay to distribute Titus' products in North America. By May, $ 25 million was invested by Titus, which within a few months was increased by another $ 10 million. By August, Titus owned 57% of Interplay's shares. On 16 April 2001, Titus announced they had expanded their control shares in Interplay to 72.5%. On the same day, they announced they had purchased Interplay's stake in Virgin Interactive, effectively making

1352-547: The distributor of the Master System in the United Kingdom and is credited with introducing Sega to the European market, where they expanded rapidly. The Mastertronic acquisition enabled Virgin to compete with Nintendo in the growing home console market. To gain a foothold in its newly established market, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. acquired Mastertronic in 1991 while Virgin retained a small publishing unit, which

1404-403: The five largest U.S.-based video game companies. In 1995, VIE signed a deal with Capcom to publish its titles in Europe, supplanting Acclaim Entertainment as Capcom's designated European distributor. VIE later published titles released by other companies, such as Hudson Soft . That year, the company expanded their distribution arm over to Spain, by forming Virgin Interactive España SA . In

1456-479: The full rights for Fallout Online for $ 2 million. Interplay's rights to sell and merchandise Fallout , Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel expired on December 31, 2013. In 2010, TopWare Interactive revealed that they were developing Battle vs. Chess to be published by SouthPeak Games . Interplay sued them and won an injunction to stop sales in the United States. Interplay won

1508-628: The game's success forged a sequel as well. Aside from Dark Alliance , Interplay published a few notable console series such as Loaded and the fighting game series ClayFighter and the games by Shiny Entertainment , MDK and Wild 9 . In 1998, Interplay's financial issues became dire. To avert bankruptcy, Interplay went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the name Interplay Entertainment. By 1999, Interplay continued to endure losses under Brian Fargo due to increased competition, less-than-stellar returns on Interplay's sports division, and

1560-566: The hit game Descent , developed by startup Parallax Software . Interplay published several Star Trek video games, including Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for computers and for Nintendo Entertainment System and Star Trek: Judgment Rites . These games had later CD-ROM editions released with the original Star Trek cast providing voices. Interplay also published Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy games, and Starfleet Command series, beginning with Star Trek: Starfleet Command . Another game, Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury ,

1612-458: The lack of console titles. Because of this, the company forced itself to seek additional funding from an outside third party. On February 17, 1999, the company entered into a distribution agreement with British game publisher Virgin Interactive , where Interplay would acquire a 43.9% stake (initially a 49.9% stake) in the company and allow Virgin to exclusively distribute their titles in Europe, effectively replacing Interplay's own distribution arm in

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1664-484: The latter a fully-owned subsidiary of Titus, which was to allow the three companies to simplify their European distribution arms under the singular Virgin Interactive umbrella. On August 28, Titus announced that they had appointed Vivendi Universal Publishing as Interplay's North American distributor in order for Interplay to focus more on development. Prior to this, Titus resecured full distribution rights to its titles in North America, which were not counted for as part of

1716-512: The media content of its parent companies drew Virgin Interactive's U.S. division closer to Hollywood as it began developing sophisticated interactive games, leading to partnerships with Disney and other major studios on motion picture-based games such as The Lion King , Aladdin , RoboCop , and The Terminator , in addition to being the publisher of popular titles from other companies like Capcom 's Resident Evil series and Street Fighter Collection and id Software 's Doom II in

1768-419: The process. To coincide with the distribution agreement, Interplay acquired a 43.9% minority stake (Initially a 49.9% stake) in the company. The deal was made as part of Interplay's attempt to gain profits, and the deal did not include publishing, which would remain as stand-alone entities. In July 1999, French publisher Titus Interactive announced plans to purchase 50.6% of Interplay's shares. Shortly after

1820-533: The purchase, they announced they would purchase a 50.1% majority stake in Virgin Interactive, with the publisher's shareholders and management retaining a 6% stake. The following year in May 2000, Titus acquired the shareholders' 6% stake, with Titus now holding 56.6% in Virgin while Interplay retained their 43.9% stake. Titus also announced on the same day that Virgin Interactive would now distribute its titles in Europe and replace their standalone distribution arm. The deal

1872-497: The region. Interplay also announced that they would distribute Virgin Interactive's titles in North America and several other territories including South America and Japan. On March 23, 1999, it was announced that the Paris-based Titus Interactive had invested $ 10 million in the publisher with a considered chance of purchasing Universal Pictures ' stake in Interplay, which would allow Titus to own 34% of

1924-434: The remaining shares held by Hasbro in an effort to expand beyond its video store base. Hasbro went on to found their own game company, Hasbro Interactive the following year. The partnership with Blockbuster ended a year later when Blockbuster sold its stake to Spelling Entertainment , at the time being a subsidiary of Viacom . Viacom is the owner of Paramount Pictures and MTV , which made Virgin Interactive part of one of

1976-595: The same year, the company launched a budget reissue brand for their PC titles called "The White Label". Spelling put its ownership of Virgin up for sale as a public stock offering in 1997, stating that Virgin's financial performance had been disappointing. Since Spelling's purchase of the company, Virgin had lost $ 14 million in 1995 and was expected to post similar losses for 1996. In 1998, Virgin Interactive's US operations were divested to Electronic Arts as part of its $ 122.5 million (£75 million) acquisition of Westwood Studios that same year. Electronic Arts also acquired

2028-403: The title in January 2002, while BioWare eventually reconsidered with Interplay. On January 24, 2002, Interplay founder and CEO Brian Fargo resigned from the company, following Interplay's failed move to expand to console gaming as well as conflictions with Titus Interactive. He later went on to found InXile Entertainment . Titus' co-founder Hervé Caen took over as Interplay's new CEO and began

2080-725: The world's largest entertainment companies. Viacom had planned to sell Spelling and buy Virgin Interactive out of Spelling before the sale. While it abandoned the Spelling sale some time ago, the collapse in the games market appears to have killed off any interest in buying Virgin. Blockbuster and Viacom invested heavily in the production of CD-based interactive multimedia—video games featuring sophisticated motion-picture video, stereo sound and computer animation. VIE's headquarters were expanded to include 17 production studios where expensive SGI "graphics supercomputers" were used to build increasingly complicated games, eventually becoming one of

2132-437: Was also involved in issues including debt. Feargus Urquhart later left Black Isle Studios and Interplay suffered a loss of US$ 20 million in that year. By June 2004, Interplay's fate was appearing to show, once employees were showing up locked out of the company's offices and other events ensuring, although Titus' co-founder Eric Caen denied that Interplay was closing, deeming them as being "Still There". However, by June 7, it

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2184-467: Was distributed in the North American market by Bay Area Multimedia instead of Interplay. However, in 2001, the North American branch of Titus; Titus Software, announced to resurrect the Virgin Interactive brand in North America to release several of Virgin's existing European PC releases as $ 20 budget titles. On 16 April 2001, Titus announced they had expanded their shares in Interplay to 72.5% and purchased their stake in Virgin Interactive, making Virgin

2236-514: Was done for Titus to focus more on the UK, French and German subsidiaries. The business was renamed as Virgin Play in October, and would continue to distribute Titus and Interplay titles in Spain. On July 1, 2003, Titus announced that Virgin Interactive would be renamed Avalon Interactive, with the French, Benelux and German operations soon following afterward. In August 2004, the company launched

2288-507: Was founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by developers Brian Fargo , Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Rebecca Heineman , as well as investor Chris Wells. As a developer, Interplay is best known as the creator of the Fallout series and as a publisher for the Baldur's Gate and Descent series. Prior to Interplay, the company's founding developers— Brian Fargo , Troy Worrell, Jay Patel, and Rebecca Heineman —worked for Boone Corporation,

2340-446: Was in development in the late 1990s but was never completed and much of its staff laid off due to budgetary cuts prompted by various factors. In 1995, after several years of delays, Interplay finally published its role-playing game Stonekeep . Other PC games released during the mid- to late 1990s included Carmageddon , Fragile Allegiance , Hardwar and Redneck Rampage . In 1997, Interplay developed and released Fallout ,

2392-540: Was later renamed to EA Pacific. Some actual Westwood Studios employees were still working with the studio. One of the senior modelers, who worked on Command & Conquer (1995), was part of the Command & Conquer: Generals (2003) team. EA Pacific was absorbed into EA Los Angeles in 2003. Some employees then went to Petroglyph Games . Virgin Interactive During the company's time under

2444-425: Was made following a similar distribution agreement in North America that would allow Interplay to market Titus' titles in the territory. A week later, Virgin signed a deal with Swing! Entertainment Media AG to distribute their titles in all European territories. Virgin's presence outside Europe at this point was almost non-existent, with only a few titles such as Viva Soccer and Jimmy White's 2: Cueball , which

2496-432: Was officially declared bankrupt and closed down all its French operations effectively. Interplay soon purchased Titus' former assets and led to the company being burdened with debt. In 2006, Interplay was brought up to the bankruptcy court once again in order to avoid the company going out of business. In April 2007, in order to pay off creditors, the company altered its licensing agreement with Bethesda Softworks and sold

2548-414: Was originally published by Interplay. Known as Kingpin: Reloaded , the game will be developed by Slipgate Ironworks . This was announced on January 17, 2020. In 2021, Interplay, via Black Isle Studios, re-released Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on modern consoles, and later that year also released a port of it on PC for the first time. In 2003 and 2004 Snowblind Studios and Interplay Entertainment had

2600-402: Was renamed Virgin Interactive Entertainment in 1993. Hasbro , who had previously licensed some of its properties to Virgin, bought 15 percent—later increased to 16.2 percent—stake in VIE in August 1993. Hasbro wanted to create titles based on its brands, which included Transformers , G.I. Joe and Monopoly . The deal cut off competitors like Mattel and Fisher-Price who were interested in

2652-463: Was reported that several California labor investigators had forcefully shut down Interplay's offices over unpaid royalties to developers, unpaid employees and not issuing any health insurance to them. By June 9, Interplay's offices had reopened after Herve Caen secured the funds to pay the insurance for Interplay's staff. On the same day, Titus Interactive announced they were declaring bankruptcy, which made Interplay's future uncertain. In July, they sold

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2704-687: Was the 1981-published Demon's Forge . The same year, Interplay Productions, then contracted out by Electronic Arts, ported EA's Racing Destruction Set to the Atari 8-bit computers . The conversion, entirely coded by Rebecca Heineman , was released in 1986 via Electronic Arts for the United States and Ariolasoft for the European market. Interplay's parser was developed by Fargo and an associate and in one version understands about 250 nouns and 200 verbs as well as prepositions and indirect objects. In 1986, Tass Times in Tonetown followed. Interplay made

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