Cinemaware

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Cinemaware's first release in 1986, Defender of the Crown, redefined computer game graphic quality of the era and secured its reputation as a developer of graphically superior games in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Cinemaware's first release in 1986, Defender of the Crown, redefined computer game graphic quality of the era and secured its reputation as a developer of graphically superior games in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Cinemaware is a computer game developer that released several popular titles in the 1980s based on popular movie themes. In the '80s, Cinemaware was also a publisher.

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[edit] History

Founded in 1985, Cinemaware's first title was the popular Defender of the Crown, a swashbuckling adventure that featured graphics considered extraordinary for the era. Spectacular graphics became the hallmark of Cinemaware's games and they remain some of the best games to be created in the '80s.

Cinemaware went onto release a string of hits, each based on some classic category of movies. Their games generally debuted on the most competent home computer of the era, the graphically spectacular Amiga. Most games were then ported to the other popular home computers of the era, such as the Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC (running under DOS) and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). This was particularly true for Defender of the Crown, which holds the record as the most ported Cinemaware game. The reception of Cinemaware titles among video game critics varied. It Came from the Desert was probably the most well received title and it is widely considered as a classic.

Cinemaware eventually branched out into sports games. Its "TV Sports" line again featured unparalleled graphics and gameplay. They were quickly considered the best games of the genre and proved very popular. The "TV Sports" line covered basketball and American Football. Some "TV Sports" titles were only released in Europe, such as TV Sports: Boxing and TV Sports: Baseball.

Cinemaware went bankrupt in 1991. This was the result of, remarkably, feature creep. While porting S.D.I. to another system, one of the company's owners demanded that the programmers add more and more features. Adding these additional features added to the programming time required, slipping the ship date for the product. Unfortunately, at this time, the sales of Cinemaware's other titles were beginning to wane. Reluctant to publish the title without all the extra features they wanted, and unable to support the company with the meager sales of its existing titles, Cinemaware went under. The company also suffered from software piracy. At certain points they threatened to stop publishing Amiga games because of piracy. Many of their games, including Wings, were cracked and spread among gamers before the game arrived to shelves.

One of the company's original owners resurrected the company in the early 21st century. Cinemaware immediately developed recreations of its popular past titles, updated for Windows and the Macintosh. Dubbed the "Digitally Remastered" editions, these games feature the same gameplay as the originals, but with updated graphics. They've also ported some of their classic games to handheld systems such as the Game Boy Advance.

On their website, they've also released disk images of their original titles for use with emulators and some are emulated via Shockwave.

The new Cinemaware also develops modern retakes on their classic games. Their first game in this endeavour is Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown which features a modern 3D engine. It debuted in September 2003 on Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Sales of this title seemed to have suffered due to insufficient marketing and poor reviews.

Ever since the 1.02 patch for Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown in December of 2003, Cinemaware has made no official announcements for its other games. One of the developers made a statement in the website's forums in October 2004 stating that Cinemaware is still working on these projects, but since that very post, no other announcements have been made. It's still very unclear what happened to the company, but it's safe to conclude that Cinemaware had gone bankrupt or otherwise ceased operations, and that one of the original developers are still holding on to the company's website and its trademarks.

On October 6, 2005, Cinemaware was acquired by predominantly family oriented game publisher eGames, Inc.. Shortly afterwards, they announced the launch of Cinemaware Marquee, a publishing label that would be used to bring innovative, new games to the U.S. market. Their first published game was Space Rangers 2, a critically acclaimed Russian space-adventure (sometimes referred to as a modern version of Star Control II). They have also brought retail releases of Darwinia from Introversion Software, Moscow to Berlin from Monte Cristo (company) and Neighbours from Hell: On Vacation and Buccanneer's Bounty from German publisher Ascaron to the American market.

eGames publicly announced that a new version of Defender of the Crown is in the works, with an early 2007 release date. A game based on The Three Stooges is also under development.

[edit] Past titles

Cineware's classic titles in chronological order:

[edit] Current titles

[edit] External links

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