Companies long gone that you miss...

[teebeeohh]

do you guys actually miss companies?
because if anything, i tend to miss good products some company happened to make and really couldn't give a fuck about the company that made it. And, as some people here love to point out whenever companies screw over their customers, their one and only purpose is to make money, so why would you just miss another bunch of guys making money?

Saying a company only exists to make money is like saying a human being exists only to eat food. All humans need to eat food to survive, but the ones that truly exist only for that purpose and that purpose alone aren't exactly the sterling exemplars of the species, are they?

The company Troika provided me with the game Arcanum, and the company GOG can provide me with that same game today. But they aren't exactly alike for providing the same product, and while I'm glad GOG exists, I'm sorry that Troika no longer does because they aren't going to make more games like it.

...Back on subject-

There have already been a ton of good examples; Origin, Bullfrog, Troika, SSI, Commodore (though I understand the company was getting pretty evil by the end there). Babbages. Borders, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks... Damn, I miss having a decent book store in every shopping mall; I feel like I spent half my childhood in such places. The Bon Marche- I didn't do a lot of shopping there, but they always seemed a little classier that your typical department store. And their mints were excellent.

i don't actually believe that companies exist only to make money but go into a thread about Ubisoft or EA fucking up DRM and you will have hordes of people defending them because "companies exist to make money, not to give you things".And in an age where big companies are almost exclusively judged on how much money they make for their shareholders and we put their CEOs on the glossy covers of magazines for that you can't really argue that those are not stellar examples of companies since they get tons of positive reinforcement(who is a good bloodsucking parasite on society, now go and fetch more money)I love the food comparison, i will go ahead and steal that.

and to take your examples: would you really care what the store is called an what company is behind it as long you get back book stores and classier department store back? would you care who makes Arcanum 2 as long as it is good and true to the original?(doe
i actually think we are a little better off with video games since a) they are easy to keep in circulation even when the original company goes under, especially today because digital distribution removes the need to physically manufacture the product, as shown by your Arcanum example, and b) with the whole kickstarter craze we see a lot of old products coming back, now made by different companies.
and i really don't care who makes who makes the next good space combat sim, as long as it gets done and people get paid for it.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Hispano-Suiza, they were a Spanish/Swiss luxury car maker between the wars. Produced some fantastic cars

Huh... shows what kind of books I read, first thing I thought when I saw that was 'shit guns' and the HS404 which was crap as an aircraft mounted weapon until they designed a belt-feed for it. -_-

Oddly, still better than Oerlikon...

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Georgie Pie (the latter being a fast food venture), of course!

Man that place was a part of my childhood, I doubt we'll ever see its like again.

I would also have to say Bioware of old, not the monster wearing its skin that's wandering around today.

Apart from that most of the companies I've grown fond of have been reborn or had their refugees personnel picked up by some decent folks:

Blizzard North: Runic

Black Isle/Interplay: Obsidian/InExile

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Denis Leary - Asshole.

There's my theme music.

 

[SushiJaguar]

MuckyFoot, BlueFang Studios, Sierra and LucasArts' adventure departments, and Level-5.

Ah and the company that made all the DDR games with the plug-in mats. I also really miss Time Crisis and the Guncom.

 

[Callate]

snip

Reasonably stated. I'm well aware, for example, that the Activision and Atari of today bear almost no resemblance to the Activision and Atari of 1982. I think there may have been particular value to the people who brought particular games together working together, and the company logos they worked under served to bring them together. But it seems increasingly true, especially in the U.S., that a company identity is little guarantee that the people who helped create that company's identity will still be working there next year. The sad, laughable shell that is Interplay makes a strong case for that point.

I'm old enough to remember when video games companies were the creation of half a dozen brilliant minds who were largely responsible for that company's entire output, and that's very much no longer the case.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

3DO, Heroes of Might and Magic III is the best turn-based strategy game of all time. Of all time!

I did like HoMMIV, it had some good ideas (I much preferred heroes acting as a unit), but it dicked around with the cannon a lot, and there was so much that was just badly done. I actually didn't mind HoMMV which Nival Interactive did after 3DO died, but it just doesn't have the same character.

 

[InfernalPaladin]

This. Also known as Studio Liverpool. Was a sad day for me when they shut as most of my childhood was spent playing their games on the PS1.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Independent Maxis is my #1. I grew up on Simcity, Simcity 2000 and especially the Streets of Simcity. I also liked Simcopter and Simtower although I played them a lot less.

Now its just an appendage of EA...

 

[Atmos Duality]

FASA Corporation

-Shadowrun & Battletech.
They always struck that balance between cool, gritty and fun.
So naturally, their properties all ended up in the hands of Microsoft...who proceeded to do no good with them for several years.

But at least I have Shadowrun Returns to look forward to before they inevitably bury it again.

 

[Patrick Buck]

Pandemic. I freakin' loved there stuff. May be wrong, but I think they were another victim of EA's attempt to kill innovation and progress?

 

[EHKOS]

Capcom, Rare and Square Soft would be my top choices.

While some might argue that these still exist because an entity happens to be using the name, Calling myself Elvis Presley doesn't mean he's alive and well right now.

I'm going to follow your lead and go with Naughty Dog and Insomniac. ND lost both founders and hasn't been the same since the last Jak game. Insomniac is apparently done making Ratchet and Clank games by the old formula.

I also miss Bandai, their older games were great, I'm not even sure if they make games anymore.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I miss Woolworths...I did my work experience in one of their branches back when I was in high school, so that was my first ever experience of the "wonderful" world of work. As a company, they managed to fill that middle ground between WH Smith and Poundland - it wasn't as slick a store as WH Smith but you didn't really get the same repulsive waste product of society shopping there like you do in Poundland.

This. There was nothing I couldn't get in Woolworths. My high street is practically empty without it. We've got Wilkinson now but it's just not the same.

I also miss Gamestation. They were my favourite video game store. GAME just doesn't have quite the same feel, even if they are technically the same company. Needless to say, I don't really go there any more.

EDIT:


Whoever made these things. Damn just where did BN go to anyhow?

DOUBLE EDIT:

Team Silent! I want my proper Silent Hill games back!

 

[Ashadowpie]

Rare and Square Soft, both technically still exist, but they have evolved into a terrible terrible mess that needs to be euthanized for humane reasons.

the poor poor bastards.

 

[bliebblob]

Quadro toys.
They made these building materials for kids kinda like legos or k'nex, except it was way bigger. You think building a toy car out of k'nex is fun? Try building one that is actually big enough to ride around in, flintstones-style.

Obviously it was also hella expensive, which is probably part of the reason they went out of business in the first place.

Even though i've grown out of them, I cherish the pieces I got for various birthdays/Christmases to this day and sometimes even still use them to make some makeshift furniture. Right now most parts are in a kind of cupboard I built to house my collection of legos and k'nex. But my favourite part of my collection must be the first edition manual.

Spoiler: wall of text about why a first edition manual is awesome, click only if interested.

You see, every box of parts came with a manual that showed a number of houses, slides, cars etc. plus how to build them step by step and how many parts you'd need. The smallest and easiest things would be at the start of the manual and the biggest things all the way at the end. If you bought a box every couple of years, like me, you could notice the manual changed from time to time. The most notable change being that the "ultimate" constructions at the end were getting less and less ambitious over the years. Hence why I love my first edition copy so much: the "ultimate" constructions at the end are absolutely off the charts. None of them would even fit in a normal house. Ofcourse, getting enough parts to build them cost literally thousands of dollars. Which is probably why they were scrapped from the manual to begin with. But even now, looking at those blueprints makes my heart race a little.

EDIT: after a little nostalgia trip around the internet, it turns out reports of quadro's death may have been grossly exaggerated. Obviously this is of no use to me anymore, but it did give me an idea. If I ever have kids, they'll get my quadro collection when they're old enough. And if they're into it, I'll get them some more for birthdays/Christmases. Combining 2 generations this way, we'll stack up a pretty good stock of parts. Maybe even enough for those crazy constructions at the end of my first edition manual! Good god, there are no words to describe how happy that would make me... (and them too probably.)

 

[BartyMae]

GSC Game World - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series
Black Isle - Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale series, Baldur's Gate series (sort of)
Westwood Studios - Command & Conquer series
Rare Ltd. - Banjo-Kazooie series, Donkey Kong Country series, etc.
Ensemble Studios - Age of Empires series

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Commodore. That Amiga 500 served me well for many a year, and coders squeezed a hell of a lot of performance out of that 1Mb ram and 8MHz processor.

-Nick

Amen to that, was my first gaming machine, Exile, Globule and the point and click games were awesome, also Alien Breed.

 

[Wafflemarine]

Westwood, have to say Westwood.

Rest in peace you magnificent bastard you.

as a VERY close second I would say FASA, the folk who made battletech. Battletech has really gone to the shitter since their time, Mechwarrior Online, Dark Ages, ect, bleh...

Yep Westwood. Most my Comp gaming is history is RTS and nothing will beat the good old Westwood rts games.

The Apocalypse has begun! When Westwood went away

 

[MarsProbe]

This. There was nothing I couldn't get in Woolworths. My high street is practically empty without it. We've got Wilkinson now but it's just not the same.

I also miss Gamestation. They were my favourite video game store. GAME just doesn't have quite the same feel, even if they are technically the same company. Needless to say, I don't really go there any more.

EDIT:

Whoever made these things. Damn just where did BN go to anyhow?

DOUBLE EDIT:

Team Silent! I want my proper Silent Hill games back!

Aye, I do kind of miss Gamestation now that they're gone, or at least, absorbed into the Game collective. I remember buying a replacement 360 controller from there just before they were about to turn into Game and the guy behind the counter advised to keep the Gamestation bag as a souvenir as it was going to be one of the last ones they were ever going to hand it. Still got it - will see how long I can keep it for. It's odd, we now have two Games in town, one of the ones that was always there and the other which was the old Gamestation. The latter somehow still feels like a Gamestation a bit, even if does have the "Game" logo up instead.

Somehow, I can remember that BN ad as clear as day. Which reminds me, do they still make Happy Faces?