View Full Version : EPYX games on the NES
Why is it that every Epyx game released for the NES was released by a different company?
California Games (Milton Bradley)
Impossible Mission II (AVI and SEI)
Winter Games (Konami)
Weird, huh?
TheRedEye
10-16-2003, 03:27 PM
I'm guessing because they didn't publish games back then?
Jorpho
10-16-2003, 04:02 PM
SEI did have some tenuous connection to Epyx, but I forget the details.
(What's even more odd is that the SMS version of Impossible Mission was published by US Gold, and Impossible Mission 2025 for the Amiga [unreleased for the SNES] was published by Microprose.)
ManekiNeko
10-16-2003, 04:23 PM
Why is it that every Epyx game released for the NES was released by a different company?
California Games (Milton Bradley)
Impossible Mission II (AVI and SEI)
Winter Games (Konami)
Weird, huh?
Sorry, but I gotta correct you on this one. Winter Games was produced by Pony Canyon (shudder) and distributed by Acclaim (shudder... again).
The game you're thinking of is probably Ski or Die, which was originally created by Electronic Arts but released on the NES by Konami.
JR
calthaer
10-16-2003, 05:55 PM
It's probably because of the fees associated with becoming an official Nintendo licensee.
Why is it that every Epyx game released for the NES was released by a different company?
California Games (Milton Bradley)
Impossible Mission II (AVI and SEI)
Winter Games (Konami)
Weird, huh?
Sorry, but I gotta correct you on this one. Winter Games was produced by Pony Canyon (shudder) and distributed by Acclaim (shudder... again).
The game you're thinking of is probably Ski or Die, which was originally created by Electronic Arts but released on the NES by Konami.
JR
DOH! You're exactly right. :)
Anyway, it's not the fact that Epyx didn't publish it themselves that I find odd, but that they were all published by different companies. I would have expected some consistancy. But then, I know nothing about how the vg business works.
calthaer
10-17-2003, 05:44 PM
Epyx was dying around the time the NES achieved its full power matrix and became the center of the universe for a while. There was an interview around the internet somewhere...it was a page called "What happened to Epyx?" Lemme see if I can find it in my lynx (hehehe - if you didn't get that joke, then...well check out the page when i find it)...
Here it is:
http://www.fomalhaut.de/c64.shtml
By that timeline it looks like Epyx was bankrupt in 1989. The guy in the interview said that they didn't understand what it was that made them popular in the first place and then tried to branch out into several different directions, all of which turned out to be failures.