Housemarque

Housemarque Oy

Type	Game developer
Industry	Video games Interactive entertainment
Founded	1995
Founders	Ilari Kuittinen, Harri Tikkanen
Headquarters	Helsinki, Finland
Key people	Ilari Kuittinen (CEO) Harri Tikkanen (creative director)
Products	Super Stardust
Owner	Private (Founders, VC-fund and other)
Website	housemarque.com

Housemarque is an independent game developer that creates downloadable games based on original game concepts and licensed IP’s. Housemarque is located in Finland; established in 1995, it is one of the oldest Finnish video game companies existing today. Housemarque is best known for its series of Super Stardust games.

History

Housemarque was founded in1995 by two Finnish game industry pioneers, Ilari Kuittinen from Terramarque and Harri Tikkanen from Bloodhouse.^[1][2] Both Terramarque and Bloodhouse were video game developers for Amiga, but the new company, Housemarque, targeted the evolving PC game market.^[3]

The first CD-ROM games for PC’s developed by Housemarque were the space shooter game Super Stardust (1996), the adventure game Alien Incident (1996) and the shooter game The Reap (1997). None of the games were commercial hits even though they received good reviews from the game press.^[4][5][6][7]

In 1999, Housemarque signed a contract with Infogrames Entertainment to develop the PC CDROM extreme sports game Supreme Snowboarding (known as Boarder Zone in the US).^[8] The game took advantage of the rapid PC component development, and it was claimed to be one of the most visually stunning games of its time.^{[9][10][11][12]} The game was presented by 3D graphics processing units manufacturer 3dfx Interactive at their stand at E3 in 1998 in Atlanta,^[13] by Intel Corporation at the Game Developers Conference in 1998 in San Francisco and at the official launch event of Pentium III processors in February 1999 in San Jose. Supreme Snowboarding sold over 1,5 million copies worldwide.^[14]

At the start of the new millennium, Housemarque shifted its focus from PC games to new game platforms. Following the genre of Supreme Snowboarding, their first console game Transworld Snowboarding was published for Microsoft Xbox in 2002 and Floboarding for Nokia's new handheld game console N-Gage in 2003.^[15][16] Other mobile platforms that Housemarque developed games for included Gizmondo (Gizmondo Motocross in 2005), J2ME and Brew (The Chronicles of Narnia 2005, based on the movie of the same name).^[17][18] Housemarque developed games also for PlayStation 2 but they were never published.^[19]

Housemarque’s commercial success came with PlayStation 3. In 2007, Housemarque developed an updated and revised version of the space shooter game Super Stardust called Super Stardust HD for PlayStation Network (PSN). The game received very good reviews, praised for its great visuals, attention to detail in the graphics and gameplay with a surprising amount of depth in its demolition scenes.^[20][21] The game was one of the top 10 selling PSN games in the PAL & NTSC regions according to 2008 statistics.

Housemarque continued to conquer new platforms with the golf game Golf: Tee It Up! for Xbox 360 (XBLA) and the PSP version of Super Stardust in 2008, and new genres with the PEGI 18 rated zombie shooter game Dead Nation for PlayStation 3 (PSN) in 2010. Although different in styles, both of the games received acclaim for theirs visuals, amount of details and gameplay suitable to the genre.^{[22][23][24][25][26]}

In 2011, Harri Tikkanen still works as the Creative & Technical Director of the company and Ilari Kuittinen is the CEO of Housemarque. The game Outland was published in April 2011 for both PSN and XBLA. The game puts together 2D platformer, action game and rich graphics, and has received very good reviews for its beautiful visuals, gameplay and music.^[27][28]

Games developed

As Bloodhouse

As Terramarque

As Housemarque

Softography

References

External links

• Official website
• Housemarque profile at MobyGames.