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Humongous Entertainment

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Humongous Entertainment, Inc.
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryVideo games
Founded1992; 32 years ago (1992) in Woodinville, Washington, U.S.
Founder
DefunctMarch 31, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-03-31)
FateClosed by parent company
Headquarters
Bothell, Washington
,
U.S.
Parent
Websitehumongous.com

Humongous Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Founded in 1992, the company is best known for developing multiple 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 GT Interactive (later renamed Infogrames, Inc., then Atari, Inc.) in July 1996. By October 2000, sales of Humongous games had surpassed 16 million copies.[2] GT sold Humongous to its parent company, Infogrames (later renamed Atari SA), in August 2005, as a result of which the company was shut down a few months after. Infogrames transitioned the label to a new company, Humongous, Inc., which continued publishing games under the Humongous label until 2013, when it faced bankruptcy. As part of the bankruptcy agreement of the Atari SA subsidiary Atari, Inc., Humongous, Inc. and Atari Interactive, Tommo acquired the Humongous brand and all of its assets, and went on to re-release some of its games into digital distribution channels in conjunction with Night Dive Studios.

History

Formation (1992–1996)

Humongous Entertainment was formed by Shelley Day and Ron Gilbert in 1992, then based in Woodinville, Washington.[3] The name Humongous Entertainment was suggested by Gilbert's ex-LucasArts colleague, Tim Schafer.[4] It became known for creating four 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.[5]

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.[6]

Acquisitions, decline, dissolution (1996–2006)

On July 11, 1996, Humongous Entertainment was purchased by GT Interactive for US$76 million.[7] In November 1997, Humongous Entertainment signed a five-year worldwide deal with Nickelodeon to develop games based on the Nick Jr. series, Blue's Clues, making it the first and only time that Humongous has developed games based on a licensed character as opposed to its original characters.[8] The same year, Humongous released their first "Backyard Sports" title, Backyard Baseball. Backyard Sports would go on to become the company's longest-running series. In November 1999, GT Interactive was acquired by Infogrames and renamed to Infogrames, Inc. In 2000, Humongous Entertainment released a One-Stop Fun Shop activity center game for each Junior Adventure series, with the exception of Spy Fox.[9] The co-founders tried to buy Humongous Entertainment back from Infogrames, Inc., using external funding, but the day of the planned purchase was the day of the dot-com collapse, wherefore the funding was pulled. The founders soon left Humongous, alongside many other key employees, and formed a new studio, Hulabee Entertainment, in 2001. In June 2001, Infogrames, Inc. laid off 82 personnel, over 40% of staff from Humongous Entertainment.[10] In May 2003, after Infogrames, Inc. purchased Hasbro Interactive—which owned the rights to the Atari brand—the company was renamed Atari, Inc. In August 2005, facing financial struggles, Atari, Inc. sold Humongous Entertainment to majority stock holder Infogrames for US$10.3 million, under the condition that Atari was to maintain exclusive distribution rights for Humongous products in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada through March 31, 2006.[11] The final title developed by Humongous was Backyard Skateboarding 2006, released in October 2005.[12] The company was dissolved on April 1, 2006.

Humongous, Inc. (2006–2013)

Following the closure of the main Humongous company, Infogrames transitioned all assets and brands to a newly established company, Humongous, Inc. In April 2008, Infogrames would purchase and merge with Atari, Inc.[13][14] Following this merger, Infogrames Entertainment's company name was changed to Atari SA, who would go on to publish numerous more Backyard Sports titles.[15]

In March 2008, Humongous signed a deal with Interactive Game Group, LLC., who then signed a US publishing deal with Majesco Entertainment to publish Wii ports of several Humongous titles.[16] A similar publishing deal with Atari Europe was also put into place. Mistic Software developed ports of the first installments of each Junior Adventure series, except Putt-Putt, taking advantage of the Wii Remote's point-and-click functionality.[1] However, their availability was greatly limited by a legal conflict concerning their development.[17]

In 2009, facing financial difficulties, Atari SA sold off its international distribution arms to Bandai Namco Entertainment.

Asset sale, brand revival and modern ports (2013–present)

Finding itself in a difficult financial situation, Infogrames (then renamed Atari, SA), filed bankruptcy for three of its American subsidiaries, Atari, Inc., Atari Interactive and Humongous, Inc. in 2013. As part of the resolution proceedings, the Humongous brand and most game assets were transferred to Tommo on July 19, 2013. Furthermore, the Backyard Sports series was acquired by The Evergreen Group,[18] and MoonBase Commander by Rebellion Developments.[19] Using the trademark, Tommo re-launched the Humongous.com website in January 2014, and, together with Night Dive Studios, went on to re-release several Humongous Entertainment titles under the Humongous Entertainment label into digital distribution channels such as Steam and port them to smartphones, between April 2014 and August 2015.

In 2019, Humongous announced plans to port Junior Adventure games once again to contemporary consoles.[20] In early 2022, Humongous released Nintendo Switch ports of Putt-Putt Travels Through Time, Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell, Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside, Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning Aren't so Frightening, and Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal".[21][22] A physical compilation of these releases, titled "Humongous Classic Collection" will be released in 2023.[23] On November 3, 2022, PlayStation 4 versions of these games were released on the PlayStation Store.

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's Child's Play Develops Maturity". Los Angeles Times. 1997-09-15. Archived from the original on 2021-09-25. Retrieved 2021-02-19.
  4. ^ 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."
  5. ^ Robert Sorbo. "Cyber Elite - Shelley Day". Archived from the original on April 9, 2009. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
  6. ^ "Cavedog Entertainment". December 12, 1998. Archived from the original on August 8, 2003. Retrieved April 23, 2015.
  7. ^ "Company News; GT Interactive acquires Humongous Entertainment". New York Times. July 11, 1996. Archived from the original on September 25, 2021. Retrieved January 4, 2017.
  8. ^ "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.
  9. ^ "Humongous Entertainment's One-Stop Fun Shops". 4 May 2012. Archived from the original on 18 November 2017. Retrieved 10 June 2017.
  10. ^ "Humongous cuts 40% of its staff". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 2001-06-15. Archived from the original on 2017-08-14. Retrieved 2006-10-09.
  11. ^ "Atari Sells Humongous to Infogrames for $10.3 Million". Business Week. 2005-08-28. Archived from the original on 2018-09-23. Retrieved 2014-01-27.
  12. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2023-01-05. Retrieved 2023-01-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  13. ^ Infogrames Entertainment S.A. and Atari, Inc. Announce Agreement to Merge: Financial News Yahoo! Finance Archived 27 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Atari GB". Corporate.infogrames.com. 9 October 2008. Archived from the original on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  15. ^ "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.
  16. ^ "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.
  17. ^ 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.
  18. ^ "The Evergreen Group Has Agreed to Acquire Backyard Sports Video Game Franchise". Business Week. 2013-07-24. Archived from the original on 2014-02-08. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  19. ^ "Wargaming, Rebellion and Stardock all bid on Atari assets". Gamasutra. 2013-07-22. Archived from the original on 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2014-01-27.
  20. ^ Frech, Ricky (24 April 2019). "Humongous Entertainment is Bringing Their Collection of 90s Classics to Consoles". Humongous Entertainment is Bringing Their Collection of 90s Classics to Consoles. DualShockers. Archived from the original on 21 October 2021. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  21. ^ 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.
  22. ^ 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.
  23. ^ "Amazon.com: Humongous Classic Collection - Nintendo Switch : Video Games". www.amazon.com. Archived from the original on 2023-01-09. Retrieved 2023-01-09.
  24. ^ "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.
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