Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Manufacturing |
Founded | 2007 |
Headquarters | , |
Number of locations | 3 offices |
Key people | Reid Young (CEO) |
Website | fangamer |
Fangamer LLC is an American video game merchandising company and game publisher based in Tucson, Arizona. Fangamer was originally spun out from Starmen.net, an EarthBound online forum. [1] It operates an online store that sells licensed indie game merchandise items such as hats, pins, vinyl records, t-shirts and other products. In recent years the company has also begun publishing physical editions of independent video games.
Starmen.net, an online forum, began selling T-shirts and mugs in 2007 as a way to pay for the server costs of the site. One of the creators of the site stated, "Well, the ads weren't paying the bills, so we thought, 'What if we took the kinda-crappy print-on-demand stuff we’re making on CafePress, and we did it at a much higher-quality?'". The next year, Fangamer was launched with an initial offering of "two t-shirts, a pin set, and a mug" based on EarthBound. [2] After the success of this initial run of merchandise, Fangamer started to expand into creating items for other games such as Phoenix Wright and Chrono Trigger . To avoid infringement of the various video game properties they were creating items for at the time, the site avoided using designs with any copyrighted symbols. [1] Fangamer also produced physical copies of Starmen.net's unofficial player's guide for Mother 3 . [3] [4]
In the mid-2010's Fangamer became known as a fulfillment partner for video game Kickstarters, providing merchandise for the campaigns of games such as Broken Age and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night . [5] [6] After partnering with Toby Fox to create merchandise for Undertale , [7] the site experienced a higher number of sales, with a cofounder saying "I thought there was a glitch in Shopify... Undertale had become just an incredible phenomenon.”. This success allowed Fangamer to expand into acquiring licenses for other video game proprieties, going on to create merchandise for games such as Hollow Knight and Banjo-Kazooie. [1] [8] [9]
Title | Original release year | Developer(s) | Genre(s) | Platforms | Release Date(s) | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Baba is You | 2019 | Hempuli, MP2 Games | Puzzle | Nintendo Switch | June 14, 2022 | [10] |
Bugsnax | 2020 | Young Horses | Adventure | PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch | 2021–2022 | [11] |
Celeste | 2018 | Maddy Makes Games, Extremely OK Games | Platform | PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch | June 30, 2023 | [12] |
Hollow Knight | 2017 | Team Cherry, Shark Jump Studios | Metroidvania | PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC | May 31, 2019 | [13] |
Hypnospace Outlaw | 2019 | Tendershoot | Simulation | Nintendo Switch | September 24, 2021 | [14] |
Into the Breach | 2018 | Subset Games | Turn-based strategy | Nintendo Switch | October 21, 2022 | [15] |
Later Alligator | 2019 | Pillow Fight | Adventure | Nintendo Switch | April 16, 2021 | [16] |
Omori | 2020 | Omocat, MP2 Games | Role-playing | PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch | July 17, 2022 | [17] |
Ooblets | 2022 | Glumberland | Life simulation | Nintendo Switch | 2022 | [18] |
Slime Rancher: Plortable Edition | 2021 | Monomi Park | Life simulation, adventure | Nintendo Switch | October 27, 2022 | [19] |
Stardew Valley | 2016 | ConcernedApe | Simulation, role-playing | Nintendo Switch, PC | November 6, 2020 | [20] |
Tunic | 2022 | Finji | Action-adventure | PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch | July 28, 2023 | [21] |
Undertale | 2015 | Toby Fox, 8-4 | Role-playing | PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC | 2017–2021 | [22] [23] [24] [25] |
World of Horror | 2020 | Panstasz | Role-playing | Nintendo Switch | October 19, 2023 | [26] |
iam8bit, Inc. is a media production and merchandising company, video game publisher and artist collective based in Los Angeles, California. iam8bit hosts an online store that primarily sells collectible vinyl records of video game soundtracks, but also sells t-shirts, artwork, pins and other merchandise. iam8bit also frequently collaborates with Skybound Games to produce physical editions of independent video games. The company also owns an art gallery in Los Angeles that hosts various exhibitions annually.
Numerous video games were released in 2018. Best-selling games included Madden NFL 19, NBA 2K19, NBA Live 19, WWE 2K19, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Marvel's Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Far Cry 5, God of War, Monster Hunter: World, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Games highly regarded by video game critics released in 2018 included Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Marvel's Spider-Man, Forza Horizon 4, Monster Hunter: World, Dead Cells, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Celeste. The year's highest-grossing games included Fortnite, Honor of Kings/Arena of Valor, Dungeon Fighter Online, League of Legends, and Pokémon Go.
Galak-Z: The Dimensional is a shooter video game developed and published by 17-Bit. It was released in August 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and October 2015 for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux. A Nintendo Switch port, subtitled Deluxe Edition, was released in March 2019 by Golem Entertainment. It was announced during Sony's pre-E3 2013 press conference in June 2013. 17-Bit CEO Jake Kazdal describes it as "modern Halo and Far Cry 3 combat in a 2-dimensional shell." Reflecting its inspiration in part by Japanese anime, the game is also known officially by the Japanese title of Uchuu Senshi Galak-Z.
The 1994 video game EarthBound is known for its cult following and fan community. Multiple video game journalists have written about the dedication of the game's fans in producing fan art and lobbying Nintendo for further releases in the series. The company has been largely unresponsive to their efforts. Prominent fansites include Starmen.net and EarthBound Central. The former was started in 1999 and became the definitive community website. Their members organized petitions and campaigns to bring English-localized games from the Mother series to North America. One such effort included a full-color, 270-page EarthBound Anthology as a demonstration of consumer demand for further releases. After nearly a decade, EarthBound was rereleased for the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013, whereupon it became a bestseller.
Rive is a platforming shoot-em-up game created by the Dutch video game company Two Tribes for PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux and Nintendo Switch, and is the first major release by the company after the company's downsizing and closure of their primary development team in late 2013. The game was unveiled in July 2014, after a long time of quiet development of the game that originated as a 3D shooter for the Nintendo DS in 2005. The game uses the same engine as Toki Tori 2+ and was developed by a three-man core team.
Yooka-Laylee is a 2017 platform game published by Team17 in for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, followed by a version for Amazon Luna in October 2020. Developed by Playtonic Games, a group of former key personnel from Rare, Yooka-Laylee is a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie series released for the Nintendo 64 nearly 20 years prior. After years of planning to develop a new game, Playtonic Games initiated a Kickstarter campaign that attracted significant media coverage and raised a record-breaking sum of over £2 million. The game follows chameleon Yooka and bat Laylee on their quest to retrieve a magical book from an evil corporation.
Super Mega Baseball is a baseball video game series developed by the independent studio Metalhead Software in Victoria, BC, Canada and published by EA Sports.
Undertale is a 2015 2D role-playing video game created by American indie developer Toby Fox. The player controls a child named Frisk who has fallen into the Underground: a large, secluded region under the surface of the Earth, separated by a magical barrier. The player meets various monsters during the journey back to the surface, although some monsters might engage the player in a fight. The combat system involves the player navigating through mini-bullet hell attacks by the opponent. They can opt to pacify or subdue monsters in order to spare them instead of killing them. These choices affect the game, with the dialogue, characters, and story changing based on outcomes.
"Megalovania" is an instrumental video game song composed by Toby Fox. It was first composed for the Radiation Halloween Hack, a romhack of EarthBound, developed for a Mother fansite's competition in November 2008. Inspired by "Megalomania" from Live A Live and the final boss music of Brandish 2: The Planet Buster, the track was intended for the romhack's final boss battle, and was developed by Fox screaming "whatever [he] felt like" into a microphone and copying it down. The name itself is a combination of "megalomania" and "Transylvania", the latter of which intended to tie into the project's Halloween theme. Years later the track would be remixed for internet fiction Homestuck's soundtrack as "MeGaLoVania" with help from Joren "Tensei" de Bruin, and Fox would use another rendition as the final boss theme for the "genocide" route in his 2015 video game, Undertale, when fighting the character Sans.
Super Hydorah is a 2017 independent side-scrolling shoot 'em up video game developed by Locomalito and published by Abylight Studios. It features a 16-32 bit era look and feel as well as a CRT Monitor effect. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita on September 20, 2017, and later, in 2018, ported to iOS on May 17 and Nintendo Switch on November 15, respectively. The game is an expanded and enhanced version of the developer's previous freeware game Hydorah.
Deltarune is a role-playing video game developed by Toby Fox. The player controls a human teenager, Kris, who is destined to save the world together with Susie, a monster, and Ralsei, a prince from the Dark World. During their quest to seal the Dark Fountains prophesied to end the world, the group makes both friends and foes. The combat system is turn-based and uses bullet hell mechanics. Similar to Undertale, enemy encounters can be resolved peacefully or through violence.
Wired Productions is a video game publisher company based in Watford, United Kingdom. The company publishes games on all main gaming platforms working on international projects, founded by Leo Zullo, Jason Harman and Kevin Leathers.
Banjo & Kazooie are a pair of fictional video game characters and the eponymous protagonists of the video game series Banjo-Kazooie, created by British video game developer Rare. Banjo and Kazooie were both introduced as player characters in the original Banjo-Kazooie (1998). Banjo is a honey bear who is accompanied by Kazooie, a bird who is often seen seeking shelter in Banjo's backpack and emerging to perform various moves and attacks. The pair's numerous adventures usually pit them against the evil witch Gruntilda.
Little Town Hero is a role-playing video game developed and published by Game Freak. It was first released for the Nintendo Switch in October 2019 before being ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows in 2020. It received mixed reviews from critics.
Undertale Soundtrack is a soundtrack album by Toby Fox, released in 2015 for the video game Undertale.
Undyne is a character in the 2015 video game Undertale. She is a monster who serves as the captain of the Royal Guard of the Underground under its king, Asgore. She is initially an antagonist to the player-character, the human, but depending on the human's actions, she may become their ally. She is reluctant to befriend the human, but through persistence by the player, eventually realizes that they were a good person. If the human makes a point of killing every monster possible, Undyne will transform into Undyne the Undying, vowing to destroy the human in order to save humans, monsters, and all other life from their actions. She is a lesbian, revealed to be in love with Alphys.
Alphys is a character in the 2015 video game Undertale. She is a bisexual monster who serves as a scientist under the leader of the Underground, Asgore, and is a fan of anime and manga. She is also a friend to Mettaton, a robot, and the captain of the Royal Guard, Undyne, who eventually becomes her girlfriend. She suffers from social anxiety, depression, and self-harm tendencies, and the depiction of her struggles with these have been the subject of praise and commentary by critics. She watches the player-character throughout the game, offering guidance at some point, though with limited benefit. She is revealed to have dark secrets, including ones that relate to experimentation. She also appears in Deltarune in a different role.