Humongous Entertainment

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]

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: Game of the Year Edition, released in October 2005.[12] The company was dissolved on April 1, 2006.

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.

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" was released in 2023.[23] On November 3, 2022, PlayStation 4 versions of these games were released on the PlayStation Store.