Biography
Digital Eclipse Entertainment Partners Co. is an American video game developer based in Emeryville, California. Founded by Andrew Ayre in 1992, the company found success developing commercial emulations of arcade games for Game Boy Color. In 2003, the company merged with ImaginEngine and created Backbone Entertainment. A group of Digital Eclipse employees split off from Backbone to form Other Ocean Interactive, which, in 2015, bought and revived the Digital Eclipse brand.
Digital Eclipse was founded in 1992 by Andrew Ayre, Hans Kim, John Neil, and Howard Fukuda.[1] The company's first offices were opened on a "nondescript, factory-filled" street in Emeryville, California, where Ayre (a native of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador) had moved following his graduation from Harvard University to live with his girlfriend.[2][3] Initially a technology startup company, Digital Eclipse soon found that their software would be useful in the video game industry, and turned to game development instead.[2] Using their technology, the company opted to produce commercial emulations of arcade games, such as Williams Electronics' Joust, Defender, and Robotron: 2084.[4] For these games, Digital Eclipse developed an interpreter that emulated the games' arcade machines' chipset, including the Motorola 6809 central processing unit.[5] This approach was meant to have the emulations act true to the original versions of these games, and not carry any imperfections direct ports could have introduced.[4] All three emulated games were released as part of The Digital Arcade series for Mac OS in 1995.[5]
Digital Eclipse found further success when the Game Boy Color was released; the new handheld console included a central processing unit based on the architecture of the Zilog Z80, the processor used in a number of older arcade machines.[4] While other developers were moving on to develop for the more powerful PlayStation home console, Digital Eclipse developed about 60 games for their niche market on the Game Boy Color.[4] These games included Klax, Spy Hunter, Moon Patrol, Paperboy, Joust, Defender, and 720°, as well as an original game, Tarzan, which Digital Eclipse produced for Activision.[6] Digital Eclipse also opened a second studio in Vancouver, Canada.[7] In February 2001, the company announced their move into the games market for "wireless Web" devices, hiring Scott Nisbet as director of wireless gaming, as well as Bruce Binder as Nisbet's consultant.[8]
In 2003, Digital Eclipse merged with ImaginEngine, creating Backbone Entertainment; while ImaginEngine remained an independent studio within that structure, Digital Eclipse's studios became Backbone Emeryville and Backbone Vancouver, respectively.[9][10] By this point, Digital Eclipse had produced 70 games on 11 different platforms.[3] In February 2006, Backbone opened another subsidiary studio, Backbone Charlottetown, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, under the lead of Ayre.[11] In May 2007, the new studio, including Ayre and several former Digital Eclipse employees, spun off from Backbone and became Other Ocean Interactive, aiming at showcasing Digital Eclipse's former traits in a smaller fashion.[4][12]
Backbone Vancouver was mostly dismantled in September 2008 and closed entirely in May 2009, while Backbone laid off the majority of its Emeryville-based staff in October 2012.[13][14][15] On June 8, 2015, after acquiring the Digital Eclipse name, Other Ocean's parent company, Other Ocean Group, announced that it had reformed Digital Eclipse as part of its Other Ocean Emeryville studio.[16] Co-founders include Ayre, Mike Mika—who had acted as technical director for the original Digital Eclipse—and former Gamasutra writer Frank Cifaldi.[6][16] The new Digital Eclipse laid its focus on video game preservation, and Cifaldi became the studio's "head of restoration", a title which Cifaldi noted was an industry first.[16] At the time, Cifaldi also stated that Digital Eclipse aimed at becoming the video game equivalent of The Criterion Collection.[17] Cifaldi would leave Digital Eclipse around 2020 to work on the Video Game History Foundation full time.[18]
Atari SA announced it would acquire Digital Eclipse in October 2023 for $4 million in cash and newly issued ordinary shares worth $2.5 million, alongside a possible earn-out of up to $13.5 million.[19] Atari closed the deal by November 6, 2023.
