Humongous

(game developer)

Humongous Inc.
Type	Subsidiary
Founded	1992
Headquarters	Bothell, Washington
Key people	Skip Saling, Erik Haldi, Aimee Paganini, Bob Givnin, Melissa Heidrich
Industry	Computer and video games
Products	Putt-Putt Fatty Bear Junior Field Trips Freddi Fish Pajama Sam Spy Fox Big Thinkers Backyard Sports Moonbase Commander
Parent	Infogrames Entertainment

Humongous Inc. is an American video game developer. The company is known for its line of educational adventure games and sports games for children.

History

Formed in 1992 by CEO Shelley Day and Creative Director Ron Gilbert as Humongous Entertainment, it is known for point-and-click adventure games intended for children 3-8, such as the Putt-Putt series, the early Fatty Bear series, and the Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish franchises. Ron Gilbert, the company's main game strategizer, helped with many of the game planning and creation stages.

Later, Humongous Entertainment began to produce games for children aged 5-10, with titles such as Spy Fox and Backyard Baseball, the latter which was arguably their most popular game, and produced sequels such as Backyard Soccer and Backyard Hockey. The series eventually grew to be known as the Backyard Sports series, and its eventual hook became the addition of professional athletes as children to be playable in the games. Unlike its other titles, the Backyard Sports series became available for most sixth generation systems (Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Game Boy Advance) and will soon be available on the Wii.

Humongous Entertainment has also released several games featuring Big Thinkers and Blue's Clues characters. In 2002, Humongous Entertainment released Moonbase Commander with very little fanfare. The game was sold at a budget price, but was well received by game review sites. Moonbase Commander eventually won IGN's "Best of 2002: The One No One Played" and Gamespot's "Best Game Not Played on PC for 2002".

In July 1996, Humongous Entertainment was bought by GT Interactive for 76$US million^[1]. GT Interactive was first renamed to Infogrames, Inc. after Infogrames Entertainment SA bought them in November 1999 and was later renamed again to Atari, Inc.

Atari laid off most people from its subsidiary Humongous Entertainment and closed it shortly afterwards in mid-2001.^[2] It was later re-opened. In 2005, Infogrames Entertainment bought Humongous from Atari for 10.3 million dollars. Atari retained exclusive distribution rights for Humongous products in the US, Canada, and Mexico through at least March 31, 2006.

In 2006, Infogrames renamed Humongous Entertainment to Humongous, Inc. The company now chiefly serves to develop new entries in the popular Backyard Sports series.

Many of the Humongous games can be played on platforms such as Linux by using ScummVM, and ScummVM may also work better than Classic emulation mode for users of MacOS X who have old copies of the game made for earlier versions of MacOS.