Hyperion Entertainment

Not to be confused with the software company Hyperion Solutions.

Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is a Belgian software company which in its early years focused in porting Windows games to Amiga, Linux and Macintosh. Later on, they were contracted by Amiga Incorporated to develop AmigaOS 4 and retired from the gaming business. AmigaOS 4 runs only on the AmigaOne systems, Commodore Amiga systems with a Phase5 PowerUP accelerator board, Pegasos II systems and Sam440 systems.

History

Hyperion Entertainment was founded in February 1999 after Belgian lawyer Benjamin Hermans wondered why no one had ever tried to license PC games to do Amiga ports. Hans-Joerg Frieden, who had previously worked on ports of the games Descent and Abuse as well as gaining a reputation for his work on the Warp3D library, was hired to be Hyperion's Senior Software Engineer. For the next few years, Hyperion would port several game titles to the Amiga and later Linux and the Macintosh, starting with Heretic II.^[1]

Notable projects include being hired by Monolith Productions to port their Lithtech engine to Linux, Macintosh and the Amiga, culminating in their port of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division in 2001.^[2][3] The game had not sold as well as had been hoped, most notably on Linux, despite becoming a best seller on Tux Games. Hyperion put some of the blame on its then-publisher Titan Computer (a claim bitterly contested by Titan^[4]) and also reasoned that Linux users were likely to dual boot with Windows to play easily available games rather than purchase specialised versions.^[5] Hyperion Entertainment then for the most part moved out of the gaming field, although a Linux port of Gorky 17 created by them was published by Linux Game Publishing in 2006,.^[6] It gained notoriety but the port was poorly received by critics who cited its poor stability^[7] They also marketed an Amiga port of Quake II, which was already available as source code under the GPL. Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War in 2010 was ported to AmigaOS 4 courtesy of Peter Gordon, around ten years after it was ported to AmigaOS 3 by Hyperion Entertainment employees.^[8]

Evert Carton took over the Managing Partner position after Benjamin Hermans stepped down in mid-2003. Hermans had courted controversy by repeatedly claiming that MorphOS, an AmigaOS-like competitor, was illegal, and had on several occasions threatened to take legal action claiming Bill Buck leading the Genesi company funding MorphOS was a "con-artist".^[9] On May 29, 2007, Carton stated that the open-source AmigaOS reimplementation AROS was "probably illegal", on page 27 of court documents related to the Amiga-Hyperion court case.^[10]

In 2007, Hyperion were sued by Amiga Incorporated for trademark infringement in the Washington Western District Court in Seattle, US.^[11] Amiga, Inc. sued Hyperion for breach of contract, trademark violation and copyright infringement concerning the development and marketing of AmigaOS 4.0. Hyperion have launched a counter action claiming fraud in Amiga, Inc. handling of Amiga intellectual properties and debts. In defiance of the ongoing legal dispute, in late September 2007 Hyperion published, distributed and marketed a standalone version of AmigaOS 4 for classic Amiga, an action Amiga, Inc. had claimed as illegal.^[12][13]

However, in 30 September 2009, Hyperion reached a settlement with Amiga Inc., who were granted an exclusive right to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to market AmigaOS 4 and subsequent versions.;^[14] however, the Amiga trademark was then also sold to other parties, including Commodore USA and iContain, weakening the exclusivity of Hyperion's status as legitimate successors to the Amiga platform. On April 24, 2011 Evert Carton announced stepping down as the managing partner of Hyperion.^[15] Since the departure of Evert Carton, the current management of Hyperion has not been made public.

Games Ports

Hyperion's game ports include (but may not be limited to): Heretic II, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, Gorky 17, Quake II, SiN and Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War. On their official website, Hyperion also claimed to have acquired the license to port Worms Armageddon, but it was never released by Hyperion, as neither was an Amiga port of SiN they also claimed to have been working on.

References

External links

• Hyperion Entertainment website
• Company Blog
• Company Forum
• 2000 interview with Hyperion's Hans-Joerg Frieden
• 2001 interview with Hyperion's Ben Hermans
• 2000 interview with Hyperion's Thomas Frieden