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Rocket Science Games was a
video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...
and publisher that created games for consoles and personal computers from 1993 to 1997. The company released '' Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine'', '' Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm'', '' Wing Nuts: Battle in the Sky'', ''
Rocket Jockey ''Rocket Jockey'' is a Windows video game created by Rocket Science Games and published by SegaSoft in 1996. The game's concept was developed by designer/lead programmer Sean Callahan, paired with an alternate reality 1930s America setting, conce ...
'', and ''
Obsidian Obsidian () is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Obsidian is produced from felsic lava, rich in the lighter elements s ...
''. '' The Space Bar'' was the final game developed by Rocket Science. After the company folded, it was published by SegaSoft. Six additional games were never completed. Rocket Science Games was founded by serial startup entrepreneur Steve Blank in 1993. The staff included auteurs of video game design, such as
Brian Moriarty Brian Moriarty (born 1956) is an American video game developer who authored three of the original Infocom interactive fiction titles, ''Wishbringer'' (1985), ''Trinity'' (1986), and ''Beyond Zork'' (1987), as well as ''Loom'' (1990) for LucasArt ...
and Will Harvey. Despite heavy promotion of the company and its products, all of its games reviewed and sold poorly, and the company became a high profile failure.


History

Rocket Science Games (RSG) was an independent game studio founded by Steve Blank and Peter Barrett in 1993 to combine the creative forces of Hollywood and Silicon Valley into compelling cinematic videogames. Sega Enterprises and the
Bertelsmann Music Group Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music com ...
infused RSG with $12 million in funding in May 1994, thus becoming RSG's North American and European publishers, respectively. Staffed with some of the brightest rising stars of the computer, comics and movie industries, RSG created a huge buzz even before the release of their first titles and claimed to be an on the verge of revolutionizing the video game industry using
full motion video Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files (rather than sprites, vectors, or 3D models) to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information duri ...
(FMV). Founded at the height of the FMV video game craze of the 1990s, their first three games utilized the technology heavily. All of them were commercial failures; Jeff Sengstack of ''NewMedia'' wrote that they "bombed miserably" and each sold below 20,000 units by 1997. After the disappointing sales of their early games, RSG turned to SegaSoft to take over as the sole publisher for their titles in development. Sega canceled about half of the titles RSG was working on to reduce costs and speed up releases, with a noticeable negative effect on their quality. ''
Rocket Jockey ''Rocket Jockey'' is a Windows video game created by Rocket Science Games and published by SegaSoft in 1996. The game's concept was developed by designer/lead programmer Sean Callahan, paired with an alternate reality 1930s America setting, conce ...
'' shipped missing local area network support that had been heavily promoted to the press and was even advertised on the box, but wouldn't be patched into the game for several months. ''Obsidian ''also suffered quality problems as it had several bugs present at the time of its release, including a few that prevented completion of the game. Despite pre-release excitement for both ''Rocket Jockey'' and ''Obsidian'', neither did particularly well financially. Unable to secure additional funding, RSG was forced to close down in April 1997. About a year before closing, in February 1996, RSG announced a partnership with
CyberCash, Inc. CyberCash, Inc. was an internet payment service for electronic commerce, headquartered in Reston, Virginia. It was founded in August 1994 by Daniel C. Lynch (who served as chairman), William N. Melton (who served as president and CEO, and later ...
to launch a virtual arcade service based on micropayments. CyberCash, a virtual currency company, would provide the financial infrastructure for the arcade and use it to jump-start their micropayment "electronic coin service". This announcement was heavily circulated by the media and, along with several other micropayment based services, was heralded as the next big thing in Internet commerce. The arcade was to be based on RSG "V3 Internet game engine" and feature at least 20 classic arcade games with a launch as early as the second half of 1996. The unnamed service was never given a firm launch date nor were any specific titles mentioned. After the initial flurry of excitement the partnership failed to produce any further announcements and the service was never heard from again. It may have been a casualty of the cuts SegaSoft made later that same year when they acquired RSG. Later SegaSoft partnered with CyberCash and used their micropayment system, now named the CyberCoin service, for their
Heat.net SegaSoft, originally headquartered in Redwood City, California and later San Francisco, was a joint venture by Sega and CSK (Sega's majority stockholder at the time), created in 1995 to develop and publish games for the PC and Sega Saturn, prim ...
online gaming service. Heat.net was shut down in 2000 when SegaSoft was restructured into Sega.com and CyberCash filed for bankruptcy a year later. Written by game designer
Steve Meretzky Steven Eric Meretzky (born May 1, 1957)
''Infocom''. Retrieved July 11, 2011.
is an American
of
Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. ...
fame, '' The Space Bar'' by Boffo Games was originally to be published by RSG but was transferred to SegaSoft after RSG closed.


Legacy

''Darwin Pond'' was an unreleased game completed before the fall of RSG but was never commercially released. Later its creator Jeffrey Ventrella released it for free over the Internet. A new version of ''Darwin Pond'' is currently being developed by Ventrella and Brian Dodd. ''Rocket Jockey'' still receives some media and developer attention, with five different remake efforts on record, mostly games modded to recreate the original gameplay. In 2011, ''
Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...
'' revisited the game in an article titled "Masterpiece: Rocket Jockey for the PC -- you heard me."


Games


Released (by date)

*'' Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine'' *'' Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm'' *'' Wing Nuts: Battle in the Sky'' *''
Rocket Jockey ''Rocket Jockey'' is a Windows video game created by Rocket Science Games and published by SegaSoft in 1996. The game's concept was developed by designer/lead programmer Sean Callahan, paired with an alternate reality 1930s America setting, conce ...
'' *''
Obsidian Obsidian () is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Obsidian is produced from felsic lava, rich in the lighter elements s ...
'' *'' The Space Bar''


Unreleased (alphabetical)

*''Dark Ride'' *''Darwin Pond'' *''Ganymede'' *''Loadstar II: Showdown on Phobos'' *''Pest!'' *''Rocket Boy''http://www.unseen64.net/2010/04/21/rocket-boy-saturn-cancelled/ Unseen 64's Entry for Rocket Boy


References


External links


Rocket Science Games website (ARCHIVED)Rocket Science Games profile
from
MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Darwin Pond Official Homepage


Articles



Article on RSG from 1994

Article about SegaSoft and RSG from 1996
Business Wire Article
Article about upcoming RSG from 1996. {{Authority control Defunct video game companies of the United States