Humongous (game developer)

Infobox Company
company_name = Humongous Inc.
company_
company_type = Subsidiary
foundation = 2005
location = Bothell, Washington
key_people = Skip Saling, Erik Haldi, Aimee Paganini, Bob Givnin, Melissa Heidrich
area_served =
industry = Computer and video games
products = Putt-Putt
Fatty Bear
Junior Field Trips
Freddi Fish
Pajama Sam
Spy Fox
Big Thinkers
Backyard Sports
Moonbase Commander
revenue =
operating_income =
net_income =
num_employees =
parent = Infogrames Entertainment
subsid =
homepage =
footnotes =

Humongous Inc. is an American video game developer. The company is known for its line of educational sports games for children that Atari owns from it's purchase of Humongous Entertainment.

History

Humongous Entertainment, the predecessor of Humongous, Inc., was formed in 1992 by CEO Shelley Day and Creative Director Ron Gilbert. It became known for point-and-click adventure games intended for young children, such as the "Putt-Putt" series, the "Fatty Bear" series, and the "Pajama Sam", "Freddi Fish" and "Spy Fox" franchises. Ron Gilbert - Humongous Entertainment's co-founder and main game designer - helped with many of the game planning and creation stages. These games were all available for Windows and Mac - earlier titles were available on DOS too. Three early titles were also available for the ill-fated "3DO".

In 1996, Humongous Entertainment created the first Backyard Sports title: "Backyard Baseball". This was arguably their most popular game in the series, but also produced varients such as "Backyard Football", "Backyard Soccer" and "Backyard Hockey". The series started with having the Backyard Kids as players, but the addition of professional athletes as children were added to the games. Unlike its other titles, the "Backyard Sports" series became available for consoles (Nintendo GameCube, Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 2, and Game Boy Advance) as well as Windows and Macintosh.

The One-Stop Fun Shops were created for Windows in 2000, one title each for Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, and Freddi Fish.

Humongous Entertainment has also released several games featuring Big Thinkers and Blue's Clues characters. In 2002, Humongous Entertainment released the turn-based strategy game Moonbase Commander with very little fanfare. The game was sold at a budget price, but was well received by game review sites. Moonbase Commander eventually won IGN's "Best of 2002: The One No One Played" and Gamespot's "Best Game Not Played on PC for 2002".

Through it's Cavedog sub-division, Humongous Entertainment also released Total Annihilation, a real-time strategy (RTS) game in 1997. This was followed by two expansion packs, and in 1999 a variation called and an expansion pack for it too.

In July 1996, Humongous Entertainment was purchased by GT Interactive for 76$US million [ [http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/GT-Interactive-Software-Company-History.html GT Interactive Company History] ] . GT Interactive was indirectly purchased by Infogrames Entertainment SA (France) and renamed to "Infogrames, Inc". After Infogrames, Inc purchased Hasbro Interactive - which owned the rights to use the Atari name - in November 1999, Infogrames, Inc was renamed again to Atari, Inc.

In mid-2000, the co-founders tried to buy Humongous Entertainment back from Infogrames using external funding, but the day of the planned purchase was the day of the 2000 tech stock crash and the funding was pulled. The founders left soon afterwards, as did many of the key employees that had created the company series and technology.

Atari laid off most people from its subsidiary Humongous Entertainment in mid-2001. [cite news |first = |last = |title = Recent layoffs at area technology companies: Humongous Entertainment |url = http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/layoff.asp?id=217 |work = Business |publisher = Seattle Post-Intelligencer |date = 2001-06-15 |accessdate = 2006-10-09] and the company was eventually shut down completely a few years later.

A new company - Humongous, Inc. - was then started up in the same building but with only 3-5 of the ex-Humongous Entertainment employees and run out of California. Game development was all done out-of-house. In 2005, Infogrames Entertainment bought Humongous from Atari for $10.3 million. Atari retained exclusive distribution rights for Humongous products in the US, Canada, and Mexico through at least March 31, 2006. Humongous, Inc now oversees development of new entries in the popular "Backyard Sports" series.

Many of the Windows/Mac/DOS Humongous games can be played on platforms such as Linux by using ScummVM, and ScummVM may also work better than Classic emulation mode for users of Mac OS X who have old copies of the game made for earlier versions of Mac OS.

Recently released

*Backyard Baseball 2009 (Wii, PS2, PC)
*Backyard Hockey 2008 (DS)
*Backyard Basketball 2007 (GC, GBA, PS2, PC, DS)
*Backyard Football 2007 (GBA)
*Backyard Football 2008 (Wii, DS, PS2, PC)

ee also

*Moonbase Commander

References

External links

* [http://www.backyardsports.com Official Backyard Sports website]
* [http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/HE_Games_List Complete list of Humongous Entertainment titles] on ScummVM Wiki.
* [http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=cat&category1=Profiles&article_no=250&page=1 Animation World Magazine article on Humongous]
*http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/26/news_6132043.html