magine if game re- there was surgence I one com- of the late pany that ful- eighties. filled all the Hasbro needs of all reentered gamers, clas- the elec- sic and cur- tronic rent. Imagine gaming if one com- forum in pany owned 1995 the rights to all the classic games and tronic age in 1988. Under a new divi- when it formed Hasbro Interactive. The reissued them in contemporary and sion imaginatively named Hasbro Elec- company quickly created a niche for classic editions. Well, before you get tronics, the company planned to market itself by releasing computer versions of your hopes too high, you may as well a new interactive console called Con- practically every board game in its know that such a company does not trol-Vision, which had been developed catalog. Then, in 1997, it released exist. But what if there was one com- by Nolan Bushnell's company, Axlon. Frogger for the PlayStation and PC. pany today that has some involvement Unlike the existing consoles, the Con- After the game sold millions of copies, with nearly every console that ever ex- trol-Vision was going to use video- Hasbro Interactive knew for certain that isted? By all reasoning, this company tapes. Axlon developed a compression there was money to be made with well- would surely be the Ultimate Video- routine that allowed five full-motion known classic games. The company video tracks and sixteen digital audio tracks to be crammed to- gether on one videotape without any quality loss. The system could switch back and forth be- tween the 21 tracks instantane- ously. Hasbro claimed that the new system would be a cross between a movie and a video- game and produced two live- action games at a cost of $4.5 million. Hasbro had hoped to sell the system for $200 and intended to Frogger (Hasbro Interactive) market it directly against the Nin- tendo Entertainment System (NES). Night Trap (Hasbro/Sega CD) game Company. And this company Unfortunately, the cost of dynamic does exist! RAM (DRAM) was more expensive decided to go after bigger fish. During the height of videogames’ than Hasbro had anticipated and there In 1998, Hasbro Interactive pur- popularity, when every imaginable was no way that the company could chased the remnants of Atari from JTS company was joining in, it was com- sell the system for under $300. Nobody Corporation for a mere $5,000,000. pletely assumed that toy companies at Hasbro or Axlon felt that the Control- Hasbro Interactive’s plan was to update would be interested in claiming a piece Vision could ever succeed at that price such well-known titles as Missile Com- of the videogame pie. Mattel, the num- so the project, as well as Hasbro's mand, Centipede, and Pong. ber one toy company, wasted little time hope of being a major force in the elec- Owning the Atari catalog alone in creating an electronics division and tronic arena, was scrapped. would have given Hasbro the title of diving right in. Other toy and game In a classic rags-to-riches type being the 'Ultimate Gaming Company.' companies such as Coleco, Milton story, today Hasbro is one of the lead- And since the company also owned all Bradley, and Parker Brothers followed ing software developers in the world. of Atari's consoles from the JTS deal, it suit. Through many acquisitions, the compa- could theoretically re-release the Surprisingly, Hasbro, the second nies under the Hasbro umbrella own 2600/7800 and 5200 with enough soft- largest toy company, never joined the the majority of games that were avail- ware to keep potential hardware cus- fray. Referred to as ‘Has-Been’ by its able during the early eighties. But Has- tomers supplied with 'new' software for competitors, the Hasbro myth was that bro's reign doesn't only cover the clas- many years. it was an old-fashioned company with sic games. Hasbro owns several com- And what about the third party ti- absolutely no interest in electronic fads panies that played a part in the video- tles? Well Hasbro owns much of those at all. The truth of the matter was that too. the company’s CEO, Stephen Has- The Parker Brothers titles could be senfeld, wanted to jump on the elec- available since Parker Brothers is a tronic bandwagon all along. Unfortu- division of Hasbro. In fact it was one of nately, Hassenfeld didn’t trust his own those Parker Brothers titles, Frogger, designers to build a winning videogame that set Hasbro Interactive on its retro system from scratch and he wasn’t awakening. thrilled with the concepts that inde- Parker Brothers' perpetual rival had pendent developers offered him. So always been that other Massachusetts- Hasbro stayed away from the elec- based game company, Milton Bradley. tronic industry during the early eighties. And naturally Milton Bradley had also Hasbro formally entered the elec- jumped on the 2600 bandwagon, re- River Patrol (TigerVision) Classic Gamer Magazine Summer 2000 16 leasing a couple of lame games (with games. Hasbro’s Tonka division some really strange controllers). Well, Hasbro even has a major once distributed the Sega since Milton Bradley is also a Hasbro interest in the portable mar- Master System. And Hasbro company, those titles could be avail- ket. The company owns the also has the future in mind able if Hasbro ever decided to re- Microvision, the world’s first by announcing games for release its classic consoles. programmable handheld con- the X-Box, PlayStation 2, Avalon-Hill was a third board game sole, through its Milton Brad- Dolphin, and Nuon game company but in a different league than ley division. (Hasbro doesn't systems. Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. This own the Vectrex, which Mil- Hasbro also had a major company produced games that ap- ton Bradley acquired when it impact on the way games pealed to strategists rather than the purchased General Con- are displayed to the public. family-oriented games being produced sumer Electronics (GCE). One of the games that Has- by its competitors. And for a short while When the unit was discontin- bro created for the ill-fated Avalon-Hill also put out a slew of Atari ued, all of its rights reverted Control-Vision was Night 2600-compatible games such as Lon- back to its original develop- Microvision Trap, a game that was later don Blitz and Out of Control. Because ers. Hasbro also owns the (Milton Bradley) released for the Sega CD these games weren't distributed as rights to two other portables: and one of the primary widely as those by other companies, the Atari Lynx and the Tiger games which influenced the Avalon-Hill 2600 games are generally game.com, furthering Hasbro's title as current videogame rating system. pretty rare today. But since Avalon-Hill the Ultimate Videogame Company. After an unsuccessful early bid at is now a Hasbro company, there's no When it comes to the modern con- joining the videogame race, Hasbro reason why it couldn't re-release its soles, Hasbro again is no slouch. In has turned around to become a major addition to releasing software for all of impact in both the current and retro today’s three systems (PlayStation, markets. It has truly become The Ulti- N64, and Dreamcast), the company’s mate Videogame Com- Galoob subsidiary was responsible for pany. bringing the Game Genie to America. And if we really want to get technical,

game.com (Tiger Electronics) catalog of games. Tigervision’s River Patrol recently sold on eBay for $800. Well if our sce- nario came true and Hasbro Interactive re-released the 2600, there would be nothing to stop Tiger Electronics from re-releasing its line of 2600 games. After all, Tiger Electronics is a part of Hasbro. There are other third party 2600 ti- tles whose current ownership is ques- tionable. When Selchow & Righter (publisher of Trivial Pursuit and Scrab- ble) went bankrupt, their assets were purchased by Coleco. Among them was the Scrabble-based 2600 game, Glib. And when Coleco went bankrupt in 1989, guess who was there to pur- chase its assets for $85 million? Has- bro, of course. The belief is that Hasbro does not currently own the rights to the Coleco videogames. But if it doesn’t, who does? Thanks to the Atari acquisition, Has- bro owns the rights to all of Atari's con- soles. Hasbro owns other consoles also and nearly every videogame con- sole has benefited from products re- leased by companies that now fall un- der the Hasbro umbrella. Although Hasbro's ownership of the Colecovision is questioned, the console can play games that were produced by Parker Brothers. Intellivision owners have also been able to play Parker Brothers

Classic Gamer Magazine Summer 2000 17