Epyx

From Free net encyclopedia

Epyx, Inc. was a computer game developer and publisher in the late 1970s and entire 1980s' game console and home computer arena. The company was founded under the name Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman.

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History

Image:C64 Summer Games.png Epyx (then Automated Simulations) was founded in 1978 as a vehicle for publishing Freeman and Connelley's first game in BASIC, Starfleet Orion for the Commodore PET. Their company quickly started developing games for other popular home computer ranges of the era, such as the Apple II family, the TRS-80 series, the Atari 400/800 and the Commodore 64.

In Europe, the British home computer game company U.S. Gold published Epyx' games for the C64, and also ported many of the games to other major European platforms such as the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC range.

Among Epyx' best known titles are the Summer Games and Winter Games series (later also including California Games and World Games), the Temple of Apshai games, Jumpman, Impossible Mission, and the "Computer Activity Toys" licenses of Hot Wheels, GI Joe and Barbie.

For the bestselling Commodore 64, Epyx made the FastLoad cartridge which enabled a fivefold speedup of floppy disk drive accesses through Commodore's very slow "serial IEEE-488" interface. Additionally, the FastLoad featured convenient disk access commands (for directory listings and program loads/saves, etc.), and a disk editor—a hacking tool allowing for direct low-level access to floppy disks.

Epyx also developed a handheld game system called the Handy. Unable to continue due to high costs, it was sold to Atari. Atari then renamed and sold it as the Lynx.

In 1987, Epyx faced an important infringement lawsuit from Data East USA regarding the Epyx's Commodre 64 game World Karate Championship . Data East thought the whole game, and particurarily the referee in it, looked too much like its 1984 arcade game Karate Champ. Data East won the lawsuit and 9th Circuit US District Court Judge William Ingram ordered Epyx to recall all copies of World Karate Championship from store shelves. But Epyx appealed the case to the US Federal Court, who reversed the judgement and ruled in favor of Epyx, stating that copyright protection did not extend to the idea of a Karate game, but specific artistic choices not dicated by that idea. The court noted that a "17.5 year-old boy" could see clear differences between the elements of each game actually subject to copyright.

In 1989, Epyx filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. According to Stephen Landrum, a long-time programmer at Epyx, the company went bankrupt because "it never really understood why it was so successful in the first place, and then decided to branch out in many directions, all of which turned out to be failures."

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