Safari Software was a software developer and published founded circa 1989 in Houston, Texas. Patrick Aalto, prior to founding Safari, released a freeware game titled Line Wars in 1989 inspired by the original Elite video game engine. The first game released by Safari was Jason Storm in Space Chase in 1993. After developing several titles, Safari made a partnership with Epic MegaGames (now Epic Games) to distribute titles they would publish. The first game to be released under this arrangement was P-Squared Productions' Traffic Department 2192, released in 1994. However in certain regions where Epic had limited distribution abilities, such as Australia, Safari utilized other companies such as Manaccom.
1995 and 1996 were profitable years for Safari with the success of publishing such titles as Highway Hunter and Seek and Destroy coupled with the shareware model and advertising provided by Epic MegaGames. In 1997, Epic MegaGames bought out Safari entirely absorbing their publishing facilities into the company. Several more popular titles published by Safari continued to be sold via the rebranded Safari Software on the Epic Games website, however in 2001, due to limited demand, Epic stopped selling them directly. Epic Classics [1], a division of Epic Games, still sells Seek and Destroy. All software copyrights of games published by Safari are still held by Epic Games.
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