Seeing as how this company's rise and fall as a bit before my time (I'm only in my late late teens), if someone would gladly point me in the direction of or give me a timeline with a brief explanation of what happened I'd be very grateful...

One of my favorite games of all time is Iron Helix, that's probably a sin somewhere, but I still like it nonetheless, and I always liked what little I knew of Spectrum.

So, uh, anyways... thanks in advance, if anyone has any info. =)

SpecHolo was originally part of a larger corporation called Sphere, Inc. Indeed, I can remember seeing the original screenshots for Falcon 3 and going, "I've seen those before!" Turns out Sphere had done simulators for the Air National Guard or AF Reserve, and I'd seen their ads (showing screenshots from the military simulators) in Aviation Week or Air Force Magazine or somesuch, and they we very, very similar.

But I digress. I'm not sure when/how SpecHolo split off (or did it just eat up its parent company). SpecHolo bought MicroProse in, uh, '96? Help me out here.... However, SpecHolo eventually took on the MicroProse name to represent the whole company (although didn't it, at least for a while, still trade under the SpecHolo designation?). The new combined company struggled through the next couple of years (Falcon 4.0 delays and other problems really dragged it down), and was finally bought out by Hasbro and lumped into the existing Hasbro Interactive division (this was late '98, right?) Now it was Hasbro's turn to flounder and lose lots of money, and they finally came to some kind of arrangement with, urr, Infogrammes? Ubisoft? One of those big French publishers eating up all the other publishers. I'm a little fuzzy on the business deal. I know Hasbro still technically owns all the properties, but they gave Infogrammes (I'm fairly sure it's Infogrammes) a 15 year lease to the rights for electronic implementation of the properties (with an option for an additional five years). I guess this means that Hasbro could come out with a Falcon or X-COM or Civilization board game if they so chose. What I'm fuzzy on is what may have actually been sold to Infogrammes--it seems the Hasbro Interactive division was taken over lock, stock, and barrel (such that many folks from that division are now Infogrammes employees, maybe even still working out of the same building they did before?). I'm really not sure there.

"What I'm fuzzy on is what may have actually been sold to Infogrammes--it seems the Hasbro Interactive division was taken over lock, stock, and barrel (such that many folks from that division are now Infogrammes employees, maybe even still working out of the same building they did before?). I'm really not sure there."

That's about right from what I know. Infogrames acquired Hasbro Interactive and has that 15 year deal in which they get the license to make games based on the Hasbro properties, which includes Microprose titles, Wizards of the Coast titles, Avalon Hill titles, and Hasbro titles (Monopoly, etc.).

Infogrames has some of the most attractive licenses in the business -- Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Civilization, X-COM, the Hasbro family boardgames, and the Avalon Hill boardgames. Now if they will just do something with all of these.

I started at Spectrum in mid-95. I left in mid-99. I'm a little fuzzy on the Sphere/Spectrum history, and know nothing about the Infogrammes business.

IIRC Sphere was Gilman's company. I'm not sure how the Sphere/Spectrum merger went down. At some point the company was acquired by the media conglomerate of that guy that drowned/committed suicide. I've been unable to remember his name, so will move on. After his death, a lot of financial games were revealed and many of his companies were liquidated. Gilman and some other people managed to buy Spectrum out from the collapse. I'm not sure of the timing of all of this.

In '95 Spectrum merged with Microprose. The guys from the old Microprose studios have a different version of the story from those of us in Alameda, but this is what I was told: Microprose was on the verge of bankruptcy. Spectrum wanted to go public and had significant VC money. They merged, in the process Spectrum became a public company. The corporate name was Spectrum Holobyte, but both brands remained in the gaming space. Microprose's former management, Bill Stahley (sp?) left to form Interactive Magic.

In early '96, Top Gun: Fire at Will was the last game to ship under the Spectrum Holobyte name. By E-3 they had decided to adopt one name, and Microprose had much more public recognition. At the time, they were considering dual branding Falcon 4, but by the time it actually shipped that was no longer a concern.

Microprose never really made any money. I believe that the public company "Microprose" only posted a profit one year, the year that we shipped Grand Prix 2 and Civ 2. I think that year we made $1,000's of dollars. Unfortunately, not much compared to our regular quarterly losses in the millions. To those of us in the trenches, during those years it felt like each quarter we lost $10 million, had a small layoff and fired a VP. Sorry... I mean a VP left to pursue other career goals. Somehow, we never ran out of VP's.

For a long time we didn't run out of money either. The quarterly layoffs continued, and towards the end of the game the Texus studio (formerly SimTex) was shut down. That was around the same time as the failed merger with GT Interactive, IIRC.

While we were still strong enough to continue we flirted with a merger with GT Interactive. It was announced, but fell through during the due dilligence phase. It seemed that neither side liked what they saw when the books were thrown open. Later events proved both sides correct.

By the end of '98 things were pretty bad, and we were running out of money fast. We weren't able to raise money like we used to be able to. We were going to be delisted and the whole nine yards. I don't think any of our exectutives really wanted to sell out to Hasbro, but choices were pretty slim by then.

Hasbro was a pretty serious mismatch, and I don't think really new what they were getting into by buying all of us developer types. They kept the Alameda studio open long enough to ship Falcon and BotF, plus some third party stuff I didn't follow real well; I was pretty head down by this point. They shut down Chapel Hill shortly after Interceptor shipped. Games.com (which spun off from the Alameda studio) survived until after the Infrogrammes acquistion, and the Hunt Valley studio (the original Microprose) is still there.


All of the above is to the best of my knowledge and may be incorrect, as I had limited access to information. If I said anything that would make anyone want to sue me, I'm sure that I was mistaken and suffering from faulty recollection. Also, info on losing money all came from stockholder reports, not from any inside information. It was kind of fun to put this down, though, after all these years.

One other tidbit about the Hasbro purchase part of the history. In the months leading up to that, MicroProse and Avalon Hill/Activision fought a legal battle over the rights to the name "Civilization." I think this hurt both companies even further (it *certainly* cost the relatively tiny Avalon Hill a big chunk), and it left them even further open to buyout. Some said (and there may be some truth to this) that Hasbro kind of waited in the wings, and then came in and picked up the pieces of both companies.

(An aside about Avalon Hill: I'd heard that in the early/mid-'90s the baseball player Kurt (Curt?) Schilling offered AH $1 million for ownership of the Squad Leader/ASL properties, and he was turned down (Schilling is aparently a big wargamer, particularly ASL). I've heard talk that the final sale price for all of Avalon Hill was around $500,000. If true, the owners really, really blew it, no? Schilling's company, Multiman Publishing, now has the rights to publish SL/ASL boardgame stuff, as well as rights to a few other AH properties [some of which are now owned by their respective designers/developers].)

"I'd heard that in the early/mid-'90s the baseball player Kurt (Curt?) Schilling offered AH $1 million for ownership of the Squad Leader/ASL properties, and he was turned down (Schilling is aparently a big wargamer, particularly ASL)."

He's also a big Everquest player.

Also, at E3 I talked to a writer that was there covering it for some website I never heard of before (and don't remember the name now). Seems this site and the staff were all being funded by the backup catcher for the Mets. The guy's a big gamer too.

I guess it makes sense. Athletes spend a lot of time travelling and they don't really work 8 hour days. They have a lot of idle time to kill. Playing computer games is probably healthier than a lot of bad habits they could get into.

I was a beta tester at Hunt Valley in the 97-98 time range. It was kinda strange. We were all pushing to get EAW done and there was a sense that we may finish the game and have no company to ship it.

Still play any EAW, Rob? With all of the mods out there, it's one of those rare games that never leaves a harddrive.

Honestly I don't. I put in so many hours testing EAW that when the game did come out I was rather sick of the whole WWII air combat genre. Months of just playing the same thing over and over and over. It was fun, however I haven't played air combat games, nor beta test a game since. (not counting games I bought that were still in beta state such as B&W and Tribes 2)

Schilling in effect runs the ASL license for Hasbro. His company, Multi-Man Publishing, not only prints (and reprints for the OOP stuff) ASL stuff, but is starting to publish *new* titles, either revisions or continuations of Avalon Hill titles.

MMP has continued ASL fairly well with a whole new revised ruleset (ASL Rulebook, 2nd edition), new historical modules, 3 annuals, and a bunch of other stuff.

Schilling plays EQ -- there's a rather funny story about how one guy from the Mets I think plays with him, had his Dwarf Paladin "assassinated" because of Schilling, and got Schilling back by hitting two home runs off of him.

--- Alan

"Schilling in effect runs the ASL license for Hasbro."

This is not exactly true - MMP pays Hasbro a royalty for the right to publish ASL materials (and now other stuff under the AH name).

And MMP through Hasbro threatens to bring in the suits whenever another publisher prints ASL material without permission or licensing -- something MMP had to pay out the nose for. All official ASL stuff is done soley by MMP. MMP has in one way or another caused a few of the independent publishers to quit or "join forces."

Which I'm not saying is bad or immoral.

What I'm saying is that Schilling virtually runs the ASL license for Hasbro. I didn't say he owned it. I'm not entirely certain, but I think that Hasbro has very little to do with ASL aside from maybe distribution, some licensing, and litigation. MMP handles the rest.

--- Alan

Sorry, Alan, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant they simply worked as Hasbro' paid agents or something.

Yes, they paid for the right to be the "official" ASL house (which they could only do because of Curt's financial resources) and yes, they've gone after people. Of course, AH went after Ray Tapio even before Hasbro bought them.

Kind of like Schilling is a paid agent for the Arizona Diamondbacks? :)

No apologizes necessary.

Ray Tapio is a big weenie anyway.

--- Alan

Way back when, as mentioned, SpecHolo was a division of the larger Sphere. IIRC, Gilman Louie basically bought their independence from Sphere. This was probably late '80s. I'm a bit fuzzy on the MPS acquisition, but I vaguely remember that MPS was in the process of acquiring Paragon Software and that stopped during the acquisition.

Microprose, from a business standpoint, was always a trainwreck. They should have been one of the largest and healthiest developers today, but for mismanagement. They certainly had the games and the numbers. I have a tidbit about it on my site, if anyone cares:

http://joetopia.homestead.com/files/JoeTopia.html

Just look under "hobbies," "computer games," and "Classics."

Scott Udell wrote:
"I've heard talk that the final sale price for all of Avalon Hill was around $500,000. If true, the owners really, really blew it, no?"

Actually, the sale price Hasbro paid was $6 million cash.

AH still really blew it. In 1994-95, when I was Director of Online Services at Interplay, the company offered AH about the same money, plus a nice chunk of equity. And we had Vince DeNardo and Alan Emrich to design and produce computer and online games based on AH properties. If AH had taken that deal, the owners would almost certainly have made far more money than the paltry $6 million they took.