Radical Entertainment is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver, founded in 1991 by Rory Armes, Dave Davis, and Ian Wilkinson. The studio built its reputation on chaotic, destruction-heavy action games, most famously The Simpsons: Hit & Run, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and the open-world superhero series Prototype. After being folded into Activision and shuttered as an original-game studio in 2012, Radical spent over a decade dormant before resurfacing in 2026 under a new banner.
Radical spent its early years on licensed properties and turned several of them into standouts. The Simpsons: Hit & Run in 2003 became a cult favorite, an open-world driving and platforming game that many fans still rank as the best Simpsons game ever made. In 2005 the studio released The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, which let players tear apart an entire city as the Hulk and laid the groundwork, mechanically, for what came next. Around the same time, after being acquired by Vivendi in 2005, Radical took over the Crash Bandicoot series, developing Crash Tag Team Racing, Crash of the Titans, and Crash: Mind over Mutant, and it also made the open-world adaptation Scarface: The World Is Yours.
Prototype, released in 2009, was Radical's signature original IP and the natural evolution of its Hulk work. It cast players as Alex Mercer, a shapeshifting antihero tearing through an infected Manhattan with brutal, fast, over-the-top open-world combat. It found an audience and earned a 2012 sequel, Prototype 2, built around a new protagonist. Prototype 2 underperformed commercially, and that failure proved to be the turning point that ended Radical as an independent creative studio.
Radical passed to Activision in 2008 when Activision merged with Vivendi Games. Following the disappointing sales of Prototype 2, Activision laid off most of the studio in June 2012, ending its work on original games and reducing it to a support role for other Activision teams. Radical's last notable contribution in that period was support work on Bungie's Destiny in 2014. After that, the studio effectively went quiet, and its Canadian incorporation was eventually dissolved.
In early 2026, the studio re-emerged, rebranded as New Radical Games, described as a combination of the original Radical Entertainment and the recently bankrupt Hothead Games. It is led by Radical co-founder Ian Wilkinson as CEO, with industry veteran Tim Bennison as COO, and it presents itself as an independent operation separate from Activision. Its refreshed website leans openly on its heritage, referencing Prototype, Hulk, and The Simpsons, which set off immediate speculation about revivals. As of now, though, nothing has been announced: no new Prototype, no Simpsons: Hit & Run remake, no confirmed project. The relevant rights are also split across Activision, the Xbox ecosystem, and Disney, which complicates any revival. For now, the confirmed news is simply that the studio is active again.