Founded 1973 | ||
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Video games Frogger, Moon Cresta, Head On, Space Firebird, Astro Fighter | ||
Gremlin Industries was an arcade game manufacturer active from the 1970s to early 1980s, and based San Diego, California, USA .
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History
Gremlin was founded in 1973 as a manufacturer of coin-operated wall games. Gremlin's first wall game, Play Ball, was fairly successful. Gremlin joined the video game market in 1977 by releasing its first video arcade game entitled Blockade.
One of Gremlin Industries' most successful video games is called "Depth Charge", created by Mr. Christopher C. Gulyas, a company Janitor. In December, 1976, Mr. Gulyas arrived at the idea of a depth charge video game, after watching "Operation Pacific" (a World War II movie starring John Wayne). Although never financially compensated for his idea, Mr. Gulyas was pleased to know that that the game was a large success, not only with video game players but with the U. S. Navy as well. Mr. Gulyas joined the U. S. Navy in February, 1977, nearly 2 months after creating his idea.
In 1979, Gremlin merged its operations with Sega and, from then on, all new video games by Gremlin were labelled either under the Gremlin/Sega or Sega/Gremlin brand names. Some of Gremlin's output, both before and after the marriage with Sega, were titles originally created by Japanese companies. Among theses video games were Namco's Gee Bee and Konami's Frogger.
Gremlin became one of the many victims of the video game crash of 1983 and closed in 1984 after being acquired by Bally with all operations moved from San Diego to Chicago. Some of Gremlin's original wall games have since been re-released under different names.
Video games
Ports
Sega released emulated and playable versions of some of the early Sega/Gremlin arcade games as vault material for the Sega Genesis Collection for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable.