Hasbro Interactive

Hasbro Interactive, Inc. was a video game-focused subsidiary of toy company Hasbro, founded in 1995 in New York City. The company held a strong focus on "reviving" and relaunching vintage arcade properties; Hasbro was the initial publisher of Pac-Man: Adventures in Time (under license from Namco), and purchased the entirety of Atari Corporation in 1998. In late 2000, facing extreme financial difficulties, Hasbro Interactive was sold to Infogrames; the company remains in loose operation under the title Atari Interactive, Inc.
== History ==
Hasbro Interactive was founded in 1995 to predominantly focus on the PC/Windows gaming market. In 1997, Hasbro expanded its operations to include PlayStation games. An agreement with Majesco was formed in 1998 to publish titles on handheld consoles, mainly the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
In October of 1997, Hasbro Interactive released Frogger for PlayStation and Windows; this game is a 3D "remake" of the 1981 arcade game by Konami. Despite receiving highly negative critical reception,https://www.ign.com/articles/1997/11/04/frogger-4 Frogger became a massive success commercially, selling over six million copies across both platforms.https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/lifestyle/2001/03/05/atari-makes-comeback/50429973007/ Influenced by Frogger's success, Hasbro Interactive acquired Atari Corp. from JT Storage Inc.;https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hasbro-interactive-20-years-ago-tom-dusenberry leading to Hasbro owning all remaining Atari assets. Through their Atari acquisition, Hasbro Interactive released 3D successors to games like Centipede and Missile Command, alongside compilation releases of the original arcade versions.
In April of 1999, Hasbro Interactive entered a licensing agreement with Namco, allowing Hasbro to develop and publish games based on Namco's arcade releases. This included the PC rights to Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and Dig Dug, and cross-platform rights (i.e. on both PC and home game consoles) for several other franchises, such as Galaga and Pole Position."Hasbro Interactive Acquires Rights to 11 Namco Titles" (https://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/12/03/0062.php) This contract led to the release of Galaga: Destination Earth, followed by Pac-Man: Adventures in Time. Around this same period, Hasbro Interactive released licensed Q*bert and Tetris titles, alongside Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge, a sequel to the 1997 Frogger game. These games were often released under a connected "Atari" brand label.
Despite Hasbro Interactive's initial success, much of its worth was arguably from greatly exaggerated factors. For instance, Hasbro Interactive owned the web domain "www.games.com", which led to increased stock from early internet-focused investors.https://web.archive.org/web/20050529034125/http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2004-2-0021.pdf (Note: clicking link will download document) The company faced great losses in 1999; this worsened by mid-2000, as a result of the dot-com bubble. With reported disconnect between Hasbro Interactive and the parent company Hasbro, corporate restructurings were attempted to no avail. Ultimately, in December of 2000, the decision was made to sell Hasbro Interactive to French company Infogrames.
Infogrames - now known as Atari SA - would rebrand Hasbro Interactive as Infogrames Interactive (later changed to Atari Interactive). The company would retain the rights to all Atari IPs, the Namco PC contract (but seemingly not the cross-platform rights), and the games.com domain.http://www.steveenglehart.com/Games/Games.com%202.html Notably, the Frogger license returned to Konami; resulting in a work-in-progress "Frogger 3" being reworked into an original title known as Zapper. Infogrames would release three further Namco-based titles: Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze, Pac-Man All-Stars, and Dig Dug Deeper, alongside republishing Pac-Man: Adventures in Time. After these releases, however, the 3D "arcade revival" series and concept were largely abandoned.
== "Arcade revival" releases ==
The following games are part of the Hasbro Interactive "arcade revival" game series. Note that outside of the series concept itself, the majority of these games are not related to Pac-Man.
=== Released under Hasbro Interactive ===
*Pac-Man: Adventures in Time (2000) - Windows
*Frogger (1997) - Windows, PlayStation
*Centipede (1998) - Windows, Mac, PlayStation, Dreamcast
*The Next Tetris (1999) - Windows, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Nuon
*Pong: The Next Level (1999) - Windows, Mac, PlayStation, Game Boy Color
*Q*bert (1999) - Windows, Mac, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color
*Missile Command (1999) - Windows, PlayStation
*Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge (2000) - Windows, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color
*Galaga: Destination Earth (2000) - Windows, PlayStation, Game Boy Color
*Breakout (2000) - Windows, Mac, PlayStation
=== Released under Infogrames ===
*Ms. Pac-Man: Quest for the Golden Maze (2001) - Windows
*Pac-Man All-Stars (2002) - Windows
*Dig Dug Deeper (2001) - Windows
*Combat (2001) - Windows
*Warlords (2002) - Windows
=== Others ===
There are several further deviations of the series that are not directly part of the game set:
*Activision released 3D successors to Asteroids and Battlezone (under Hasbro's license), alongside Taito's Space Invaders.
*Midway Games produced a somewhat-competing set of "arcade revival" titles, including games such as Paperboy and Robotron X.
*Some Hasbro Interactive/Majesco releases on 8 and 16-bit consoles, despite using the cover artwork of the "revival" titles, are instead ports of the original arcade games; this mainly occurred with versions of Frogger.
Crave Entertainment would publish additional variants of some titles originating from Hasbro Interactive, Activision, and Midway Games; further connecting the three game sets.
== Trivia ==
*The reasoning for Hasbro's Pac-Man rights being PC-exclusive is seemingly related to the release of Pac-Man World, a PlayStation game published by Namco Hometek directly. The exact reasoning for this restriction is unclear, though was possibly a way to differentiate Adventures of Time from Pac-Man World, and/or have the two coexist.
*The following games were part of Hasbro's licensing arrangement from Namco, but were not utilized in any Hasbro Interactive/Infogrames releases: Bosconian, Dragon Buster, Galaxian, Mappy, Metro-Cross, Pole Position, and Rally-X.https://www.gamespot.com/articles/pac-man-from-hasbro/1100-2451613/
*After acquiring the domain, Infogrames/Atari SA reportedly had little interest in maintaining games.com, leading to them attempting to redesign and sell the website to a Cincinnati-based "Games, Inc"; however, this deal fell apart for unclear reasons. As of 2024, the games.com domain is owned by AOL.
*Coincidentally, prior to Hasbro purchasing Atari Corp., an original Pac-Man PC game was planned to be released by Atari in 1997. It was presumably canceled following JT Storage's purchase of the company.https://web.archive.org/web/20171226150315/http://ftp.pigwa.net/stuff/mirror/www.atari-explorer.com/articles-PR-AI.html
*Hasbro Interactive was noted as being somewhat litigious, filing lawsuits against several companies who produced Pac-Man clones on home computers. One such party sued by Hasbro Interactive, ironically, was GT Interactive; a company that was purchased by Infogrames in 1999, prior to Infogrames purchasing Hasbro Interactive.
== References ==
Category:Video Game Companies