Humongous Entertainment
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. 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. 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. The name Humongous Entertainment was suggested by Gilbert's ex-LucasArts colleague, Tim Schafer. 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 formally cross over with ones in another 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. 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 "" plus an expansion pack in 1999. Acquisitions, decline, dissolution (1996–2006). On July 11, 1996, Humongous Entertainment was purchased by GT Interactive for . 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. In November 1999, GT Interactive was acquired by Infogrames and renamed it 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". 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. 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 , under the condition that all titles developed by Humongous Entertainment are released through March 31, 2006. No further game was completed by Humongous Entertainment in  the given time, and the company was dissolved the day after. 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., not bound to any agreement from Atari, Inc., which would go on to publish several titles under the Humongous name. Around this time, Humongous signed a deal with Interactive Game Group, LLC., who then signed a US publishing deal with Majesco Entertainment in March 2008 to publish Wii ports of several Humongous titles. 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. However, but their availability was greatly limited by a legal conflict concerning their development. Atari continued to release games in the "Backyard Sports" series around this time, under license from Humongous. 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, and "MoonBase Commander" by Rebellion Developments. 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, late into the eighth generation of video games, Humongous announced plans to port  Junior Adventure games once again to contemporary consoles within the same year, but the said ports never released during that timeframe. On December 27, 2021, Humongous Entertainment announced that "Putt-Putt Travels Through Time" and "" would be released on the Nintendo Switch on January 3, 2022, followed by Switch releases of "Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo", "", "", and "Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal"" on February 10. Currently, the Humongous trademark is owned by Hong Kong based company Billionsoft, while Tommo owns the Humongous properties.