Humongous Entertainment

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Humongous Entertainment, Inc.
Atari (1996–2005)
Websitehumongous.com

Humongous Entertainment, Inc. was an American

edutainment franchises, most prominently Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam and Spy Fox, which, combined, sold over 15 million copies and earned more than 400 awards of excellence.[1]

Humongous Entertainment was acquired by

Infogrames (later renamed Atari SA), in August 2005 and laid off the studio's employees. Infogrames held the assets under a new subsidiary, Humongous, Inc., until its bankruptcy in 2013, in which the assets were sold to Tommo. Tommo released some of its games into digital distribution
channels using the Humongous name.

History

Formation (1992–1996)

Humongous Entertainment was formed by

point-and-click adventure game series intended for young children, branded collectively as "Junior Adventures", with the four series being the Putt-Putt series, the Freddi Fish series, the Pajama Sam series and the Spy Fox series. Despite all four series being developed and released in parallel, characters from one series do not cross over with ones in another (except for Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear's Activity Pack, where Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear combined their Fun Packs) and instead appear as cameos or Easter eggs in any of the three other series. The company became the third largest children's educational-software company.[6]

In 1995, Gilbert and Day established a company division, Cavedog Entertainment, in Seattle, set to develop games of alternative genres, and released Total Annihilation, a real-time strategy (RTS) game, in 1997. This was followed by two expansion packs in 1998, as well as a variation called Total Annihilation: Kingdoms plus an expansion pack in 1999.[7]

Acquisitions, decline, dissolution (1996–2006)

On July 11, 1996, Humongous Entertainment was purchased by

Hasbro Interactive—which owned the rights to the Atari
brand—the company was renamed Atari, Inc.

On August 22, 2005, facing financial struggles, Atari, Inc. sold the Humongous Entertainment business to Infogrames for shares worth US$10.3 million. As part of the deal, the assets were transferred to a new Infogrames subsidiary (Humongous, Inc.), while the employees of Humongous Entertainment were laid off. Infogrames expected to sell Humongous, Inc. further. On the same day, Atari, Inc. signed an agreement with Homongous, Inc. to exclusively distribute the company's games in North America through March 2006, which was later extended through March 2007.[12][13]

Post-closure asset handling (2006–present)

In April 2008, Infogrames would purchase and merge with Atari, Inc.

The Evergreen Group,[21] and MoonBase Commander by Rebellion Developments.[22]

Beginning in 2014, the relaunched Humongous brand under Tommo began re-releasing the original Junior Adventure and Junior Arcade titles for Windows and Mac; ports for most of these titles were also released for mobile devices.[23] In early 2022, Humongous released Nintendo Switch ports of several of the Junior Adventure titles, followed by ports of these titles for the PlayStation 4 later that year.[24][25][26] A digital compilation of these releases, titled "Humongous Classic Collection" was released in December 2022 for both systems, while a Nintendo Switch exclusive physical compilation was released in 2023.[27][28][29]

Games developed

References

  1. ^ a b "Majesco Brings Humongous' Best-Selling Children's Properties to Wii". GameZone. March 25, 2008. Archived from the original on January 17, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2015.
  2. ^ Kubin, Jacquie (October 1, 2000). "There's Humongous Rewards in Edutaining Little Kids". Animation World Network. Archived from the original on October 12, 2016.
  3. ^ "Humongous Entertainment Fast Facts". Humongous Entertainment. August 26, 1997. Archived from the original on February 10, 1998.
  4. ^ "Humongous Entertainment's Child's Play Develops Maturity". Los Angeles Times. 1997-09-15. Archived from the original on 2021-09-25. Retrieved 2021-02-19.
  5. ^ Dave Grossman (2009-06-19). "Q&A With the Team". Telltale Games. Archived from the original on 2022-05-18. Retrieved 2021-02-19. True fact: It was Tim Schafer who suggested the name "Humongous Entertainment."
  6. ^ Robert Sorbo. "Cyber Elite - Shelley Day". Archived from the original on April 9, 2009. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
  7. ^ "Cavedog Entertainment". December 12, 1998. Archived from the original on August 8, 2003. Retrieved April 23, 2015.
  8. New York Times. July 11, 1996. Archived
    from the original on September 25, 2021. Retrieved January 4, 2017.
  9. ^ "Nickelodeon and Humongous Entertainment Ink Exclusive Five-Year Worldwide Deal To Create CD-ROMs for Blue's Clues, Nick Jr.'s Top-Rated Preschool TV Show". Humongous Entertainment and Nickelodeon. November 6, 1997. Archived from the original on October 31, 2000. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
  10. ^ "Humongous Entertainment's One-Stop Fun Shops". 4 May 2012. Archived from the original on 18 November 2017. Retrieved 10 June 2017.
  11. ^ "Humongous cuts 40% of its staff". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 2001-06-15. Archived from the original on 2017-08-14. Retrieved 2006-10-09.
  12. Business Week. 2005-08-28. Archived
    from the original on 2018-09-23. Retrieved 2014-01-27.
  13. ^ "Form 10-K". Atari, Inc. June 29, 2006. Retrieved December 4, 2023 – via Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval.
  14. ^ Infogrames Entertainment S.A. and Atari, Inc. Announce Agreement to Merge: Financial News Yahoo! Finance Archived 27 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ "Atari GB". Corporate.infogrames.com. 9 October 2008. Archived from the original on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  16. ^ "Infogrames Entertainment Fiscal Year 2008/2009 Earnings" (PDF). Infogrames. 29 May 2009. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 January 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  17. ^ "Majesco Entertainment and Interactive Game Group Bring Humongous' Best-Selling Children's Properties to Wii in the U.S." 26 March 2008. Archived from the original on 27 December 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2021.
  18. ^ Moss, Richard (January 16, 2012). "Maniac Tentacle Mindbenders: How ScummVM's unpaid coders kept adventure gaming alive". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on February 23, 2016. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  19. ^ Atari. "Atari Brings Award Winning HUMONGOUS Kids Edutainment Games to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch for the First Time". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  20. ^ "Nimbus Games to bring their newest title, Spy Fox in Dry Cereal, to Android". Droid Gamers. 2012-05-16. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
  21. Business Week. 2013-07-24. Archived
    from the original on 2014-02-08. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  22. Gamasutra. 2013-07-22. Archived
    from the original on 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2014-01-27.
  23. ^ Clark, Nicole (2019-05-09). "From 'Putt Putt' to 'Freddi Fish'—How Humongous Entertainment Made Edutainment Fun". Vice. Retrieved 2024-01-08.
  24. ^ Humongous [@HumongousEnt] (February 3, 2022). "Get your adventure on with four of the best games you've ever played, arriving for #NintendoSwitch on February 10th" (Tweet). Retrieved February 10, 2022 – via Twitter.
  25. ^ Humongous [@HumongousEnt] (December 27, 2021). "Freddi Fish 3 and Putt-Putt Travels Through Time on January 3rd, 2022!" (Tweet). Retrieved January 4, 2022 – via Twitter.
  26. ^ "Once trapped in fragile plastic diskettes..." Twitter. November 2, 2022.
  27. ^ "Humongous Classic Collection". store.playstation.com. Retrieved 2024-01-08.
  28. ^ "Amazon.com: Humongous Classic Collection - Nintendo Switch : Video Games". www.amazon.com. Archived from the original on 2023-01-09. Retrieved 2023-01-09.
  29. ^ "Humongous Classic Collection for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Official Site". www.nintendo.com. Retrieved 2024-01-08.
  30. ^ "Humongous Entertainment Brings a New Perspective to Children's Software; Putt-Putt's Newest Junior Adventure™ Puts Kids in the Driver's Seat Putt-Putt Enters the Race™ Hits Retail Stores This Week; Humongous.com Kicks off Online Launch Party for Putt-Putt on January 14" (Press release). Humongous Entertainment. January 5, 1999. Archived from the original on October 2, 1999.

External links

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