U.S. Games Corporation was a video game company founded by Donald Yu, which originally produced handheld electronic sports games. It pivoted to focus exclusively on video game software in 1981, and was acquired by cereal company

Quaker Oats The Quaker Oats Company, known as Quaker, is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by PepsiCo since 2001. History Precursor miller companies In the 1850s, Ferdinand Schumacher and Robert Stuart founded oat mills. S ...

in 1982 to develop games for the

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...

. U.S. Games released their first game, ''

Space Jockey "Space Jockey" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.James Gifford. 2000. ''Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader's Companion''. SacramentoNitrosyncretic Press. Part of his Future History series, it originally appeared in ...

'' for the Atari 2600, in January 1982, followed by 13 more cartridges in 1982 and 1983. ''Space Jockey'' and other early titles used the Vidtec brand name. Although sometimes cited as an example of non-technology companies attempting to produce video games, Quaker purchased U.S. Games to work with its

Fisher-Price Fisher-Price is an American company that produces educational toys for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, headquartered in East Aurora, New York, East Aurora, New York (state), New York. The company was founded in 1930 during the Great Depressio ...

toy brand and compete with rival cereal company

General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...

Parker Brothers Parker Brothers (known by Parker outside of North America) was an American toy and game manufacturer which in 1991 became a brand of Hasbro. More than 1,800 games were published under the Parker Brothers name since 1883. Among its products wer ...

division. Unlike U.S. Games, Parker Brothers was experienced in producing family and licensed games. It had a very successful 1982 in the video game market, with hits like ''

Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and manufactured by Sega. In North America, it was released by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct a series of frogs to their homes by crossing a busy road and a hazardous rive ...

'' and '' The Empire Strikes Back''. U.S. Games's titles sold poorly, and Quaker closed the division during the

video game crash of 1983 The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including ma ...

. "None of our games became a hit," said spokesman Ronald Bottrell. "Instead of pouring in a lot more capital, we decided to drop it".Video Games Go Crunch!
- TIME magazine, Oct. 17, 1983 issue

Published titles

In order of product number: *''

'' *''Sneak n' Peek'' *''

Word Zapper ''Word Zapper'' is an Atari 2600 game written by Henry Will IV and published under the Vidtec label of U.S. Games in 1982. ''Word Zapper'' is a mixture of spelling and arcade gaming, in which a word appears at the bottom of the screen and then le ...

'' *''Commando Raid'' *'' Name This Game'' *'' Towering Inferno'' *''M.A.D.'' *''

Gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

'' *''Squeeze Box'' *''

Eggomania ''Eggomania'' is an action video game released in January 1983 by U.S. Games for the Atari 2600. Similar in design to '' Kaboom!'', which itself is a derivative of the arcade game ''Avalanche'', the objective is to catch eggs in a hat which are ...

'' *''Picnic'' *''Piece o' Cake'' *''Raft Rider'' *'' Entombed''

References

Video game companies established in 1982 Video game companies disestablished in 1983 Defunct video game companies of the United States Video game development companies Quaker Oats Company 1982 establishments in the United States Atari 2600 {{US-videogame-company-stub