Bullfrog Productions, game featured: Populous, acquired by EA in 1995
Maxis, game featured: Sim City 2000, acquired by EA in 1997
Westwood Studios, game featured: Command and Conquer - Red Alert, acquired by EA in 1998
DreamWorks Interactive LLC, game featured: Medal of Honor, acquired by EA in 2000
Honorable mention to Mythic Entertainment/Bioware, acquired by EA in 2006
Song referenced: Runaway Train - Soul Asylum
Bullfrog was a lost legend of development. Back when Peter Molyneux wasn’t a pile of lies in a trenchcoat.
I fell for the lies every time. I felt like a teenage girl dating a cheating ex, telling myself he really changed this time, it would be different.
Well maybe we needed a dog control button, Peter!
Maybe I’m still not over it. I’ll see myself out.
After Fable was where I drew the line.
The crazy thing was Fable was actually good! Once you got past Peter’s grandiosity and fabrications, it was a fun, albeit a little shallow, experience.
But Peter had to be out there carrying on about how we could cut down a tree and that same tree would be a stump in the future, or something like that.
This was the game where I learned the bullfrog logo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicate_(1993_video_game)
If you’ve never played it, it comes up on the list of greatest games of all time fairly regularly.
Is this similiar to Heart of the Machine?
Huh. Pricey for early access.
However what I will say directly is that non of the following ups came ven close to catching the spirit of the first. The biggest aspect of they miss is that I. the first, your agents are semi autonomous. You can directly control them, but they also just kinda do their own thing if you want.
The play style was more of a mix between like… a 4 person shooter squad and maybe… warcraft where you can just send the units off to do something.
I loved syndicate, but not any of the followups and especially not satellite reign. It completely missed the point of the first game, which was almost more resource and unit management.
Whu? What early access games are you playing? The only ones I’ve seen be less than 30 dollars for early access are games that were never going to be 30 dollars in the first place.
Let’s add Sierra Entertainment to this list. King’s Quest 4 Lyfe
Bullfrog made Theme Park and Theme Hospital. Two amazing games! They’re both on Gog now too which is great!
You need to up to caffeine in your coffee shop! Get those customers buzzing!
I loved Theme Park. We would spend ages playing it. We had few games back then and Theme Park and Piranha were staples.
The rollercoaster was so buggy though and eventually made the map unplayable. I played it a few years ago on DOSbox with the same issue :( even the DS port glitched a lot.
These are fine examples, but all over 20 years old now! (Also I’m still salty about Origin Systems in 1992!)
But hey, EA has never stopped sucking! We can also lament recent purchases like legendary UK studio Codemasters (2021) or Respawn (2017). Respawn is especially funny since it was made by ex-Infinity Ward founders, who got bought again! I wonder what their next future-EA-acquisition project will be?
Very long time ago Electronic Arts (ECA at the time, with the cube, ball and pyramid logo) published amazing games.
I really really enjoyed my Racing Destruction Set or the Pinball Construction Set on the C64.
I’m just happy now I did pirate them and never gave them my money to cause what EA is now.
So in my eyes “ECA” is another company “EA” killed.
(40 years ago, when I was 15 - sue me, EA )
(Also I’m still salty about Origin Systems in 1992!)
They are finally getting re-discovered by younger generations a bit more, but they are often missing from memes like this. Considering how groundbreaking their projects like Wing Commander and of course Ultima were, it is a true shame. They truly fell from the very top and slowly died thanks to EA. (And, admittedly, also in part mismanagement and not being able to overcome the prohibitive cost of physical media i.e. floppy disks and CDs properly)
