Imagic

Imagic ( ) was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, and Demon Attack. Imagic also released games for Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit computers, TI-99/4A, IBM PCjr, VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Magnavox Odyssey². Their Odyssey² ports of Demon Attack and Atlantis were the only third-party releases for that system in America. The company never recovered from the video game crash of 1983 and was liquidated in 1986.

==History== Imagic was the second independent video game publisher in the early days of home programmable video game systems following Activision. Prior to Activision only Atari and Mattel offered games for their respective consoles. In early 1981, Bill Grubb, the founding CEO of Imagic, had recently left his position as the VP of Sales and Marketing at Atari. After witnessing Activision's meteoric success, Grubb began making plans to form another independent Atari game developer and teamed up with Dennis Koble who was managing game development at Atari. By coincidence at the same time, Jim Goldberger, a marketing executive at Mattel, was working on a business plan with Brian Dougherty, a senior engineer at Mattel, to form the first independent game company for the Mattel Intellivion, the second largest game console at the time. Grubb and Goldberger knew each other and soon discovered each other's plans. Grubb suggested joining forces which would allow the new company to distinguish itself from Activision by offering games for both platforms. An agreement was reached and in the Spring of 1981 Grubb and Dougherty pitched venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins and Merrill Pickard raising $2 million in seed capital. The company was organized as a California Corporation on June 1, 1981, with Frank Caufield and Steve Merrill joining the board along with Grubb and Dougherty. Other founders included Bob Smith and Rob Fulop from Atari, Inc., Dave Durran from Mattel as well as Pat Ransil and Gary Kato.