| Industry | Interactive entertainment |
|---|---|
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Defunct | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
| Key people | Eric and Hervé Caen (founder) |
| Products | Video games E |
| Revenue | € 73.2 million (2002) |
| Website | www.titus-interactive.com (archived version 2004-06-11) |
Titus Software, later known as Titus Interactive S.A., was a long-running French software publisher that produced and published video games for various formats over its lifetime.
Avalon Interactive was a subsidiary of Titus Interactive, responsible for the European distribution of the group’s games.
Founded by brothers Eric and Hervé Caen in France in 1985,[1] Titus began releasing titles on the Commodore Amiga and PC before moving on to consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Sony Playstation, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo 64, finally publishing titles for the Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2 and for the Xbox.
Popular in the USA and in other territories, Titus games were generally well received. Titles like Evil Zone (produced by YUKE's Future Media Creators) and Top Gun: Combat Zones proved that the licenses that the company acquired during its lifetime were a good way of expanding and creating good games. Other Titus designed games, such as Virtual Kasparov, Automobili Lamborghini, Virtual Chess 64 were well received. Most notably games such as Roadsters (the Nintendo 64 version), Incredible Crisis (developed by Polygon Magic), Prehistorik Man and Lamborghini American Challenge gained almost an excellent status among players. But Titus was also infamous for its reputation in the creation of games notable for its bad reception on the media. Superman for the Nintendo 64 was notorious for its negative status among gamers. GameTrailers called it the worst game of all time.[2] It is currently holding an overall ranking of 23% at GameRankings.[3] Similarly the 2003 game RoboCop also received overwhelmingly negative reviews. Gamespot gave it 2.2/10 saying "RoboCop has a bevy of horrible problems that render the game practically unplayable."[4]
Titus acquired BlueSky Software and the even longer-lived UK developer Digital Integration in 1998 and went public, listing on the French stock market.[1] It also gained a majority interest in American struggling publisher Interplay in August 2001, naming Hervé Caen CEO of the company after the departure of Interplay’s Brian Fargo.[5] By the turn of the century the strain of Titus’ expansion was beginning to show, and the company fizzled into financial, then legal difficulties, culminating in a close of business in 2005.
Most games were developed in-house by Titus Software unless otherwise stated.
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