Spectrum HoloByte, Inc.

Spectrum HoloByte, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher. The company, founded in 1983 in Boulder, Colorado by Jeff Sauter, Phil Adam and Mike Franklin, was best known for its simulation games, notably the Falcon series of combat flight simulators, and for publishing the first version of Tetris outside the Soviet Union (in 1987, for MS-DOS). Spectrum HoloByte also published games for various home computers and video game consoles. The chairman of Spectrum HoloByte, Gilman Louie, also founded Nexa Corporation, a developer of entertainment software, which went on to merge with Spectrum HoloByte and company President Phil Adam prior to the company's move from Colorado to California. In 1992, HoloByte received an investment from Kleiner Perkins, which let the company repurchase shares formerly owned by Robert Maxwell's companies, ending its ties to their bankruptcies.[1] In December 1993, Spectrum HoloByte merged with MicroProse to form MicroProse Inc.[2] For the following years, games from both companies were published under their respective brands, but in 1996 all titles were consolidated under the MicroProse brand.[3] Hasbro Interactive acquired the merged company in 1998, and what had been Spectrum HoloByte ceased to exist when the development studio in Alameda, California was closed in 1999.[4] Hasbro subsequently[when?] sold all the assets of the various Hasbro Interactive studios to Infogrames, including the Atari brand itself.