There have been a lot of good games over the years, but there are some that are so good that you want to play again….
Games that Need Remakes
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Imagineering Inc. is one of those studios you never heard of by name but almost certainly played their games. Based in Glen Rock, New Jersey, they were the in-house development studio for Absolute Entertainment from 1986 to 1992 — a short run that left a bigger mark than most people realize.
Imagineering was born in 1986 when a group of Activision employees resigned after a dispute with new management. That kind of “screw it, we’ll do it ourselves” origin story was pretty common in early gaming, and it almost always produced interesting results. These weren’t people waiting around for permission — they had the skills and they went and built something.
You might not know the Imagineering name but you know their work. A Boy and His Blob, Double Dragon, Jordan vs. Bird, Bart vs. the Space Mutants, Bart vs. the World — these are NES classics that defined a generation of gaming. They were doing licensed games before licensed games were cool, and doing them better than most. Their client list included Acclaim, Atari, Activision, and THQ which tells you everything about how much the industry trusted them to deliver. Bart vs the Space Mutants is one game that helped define mine and many others childhoods.
David Crane, Alex Demeo, Dan and Garry Kitchen — the people behind Imagineering weren’t nobodies. These were serious names in early gaming who knew exactly what they were doing.
Absolute Entertainment absorbed Imagineering in 1992 and then went bankrupt in 1995. Short run, real impact. The kind of studio that doesn’t get enough credit for shaping what early console gaming actually looked like.
There have been a lot of good games over the years, but there are some that are so good that you want to play again….
Imagineering developed licensed games across NES, SNES, Game Boy, Genesis, and Atari platforms, including A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants (a personal favorite), Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit, and titles based on properties like Aladdin and The Ren and Stimpy Show.
Imagineering was the in-house development division of Absolute Entertainment, founded in 1986 by Garry Kitchen and his brother Dan Kitchen along with Alex DeMeo and John Van Ryzin, after they left Activision following a management dispute.
No. Imagineering was absorbed into Absolute Entertainment in 1992 and ceased to exist as a separate studio. Absolute Entertainment itself went bankrupt in 1995 and shut down. Some staff transitioned to Skyworks Technologies, a new company formed by Garry Kitchen and David Crane.
Absolute Entertainment absorbed Imagineering in 1992. When Absolute Entertainment filed for bankruptcy in 1995 and suspended operations, Imagineering’s work effectively ended with it.