Before They Were Famous: Forgotten Franchises From Today’s Biggest Developers

The small beginnings of gaming’s giants.

By: Wesley Fenlon
May 31, 2011

Over the past two decades, iD Software refined its arsenal of hellspawn- and alien-blastin’ weaponry into a list of deadly tools most gamers will instantly recognize. Chainguns? Classic. Doom shotgun? The ultimate boomstick. And then there’s the one we’ll never forget, the grand mack daddy of them all: the BFG9000. But before iD practically invented the first-person shooter with Wolfenstein 3D or kickstarted the modern deathmatch with Quake, its first game protagonist was armed with a slightly less deadly tool: a pogo stick. Only a few years later, Epic Games found enormous success with the Unreal Tournament series before zooming out to the third person and putting chainsaws into the hands of its trademark roided out muscle men. Before Marcus Phoenix, Epic got its start with a humble platformer that crossed Bugs Bunny with the speed and ‘tude of Sonic the Hedgehog to create Jazz Jackrabbit.

Some of today’s biggest developers are known for pushing the limits of technology and crafting visceral, incredibly popular games — usually shooters — with large competitive communities. iD and Epic rule on the technology front with some of the most powerful engines in gaming. Bungie set the bar for console multiplayer with online matchmaking, replays, and map editing in the Halo series. And most recently, a little game called Call of Duty: Black Ops netted Treyarch the prestigious honor of crafting the best-selling game of all time…but we bet you’ve never heard of Treyarch’s first game, a PC fight sim called Die By the Sword.