Julian Eggebrecht | |
|---|---|
 Julian Eggebrecht at Gamescom 2012 | |
| Occupation(s) | Video game producer, director |
| Known for | Co-founder of Factor 5 |
Julian Eggebrecht is a German video game businessman. He is notable for having been one of the founding members and creative director of Factor 5, [1] a German-American game development company.
Eggebrecht co-founded Factor 5 in Germany in 1987 and moved the company to California in 1996 for the purpose of closer working with its largest partner, LucasArts. [2] [3]
He was key in Factor 5 becoming Nintendo's technology partner, supplying the Nintendo 64 audio development software; and in the fundamental development of the GameCube [4] and Wii [ citation needed ] console hardware and software. He was a member of the Sony PS3 Edge toolset group.[ citation needed ] He led Factor 5's teams to pioneer many technological advancements in video game audiovisual technology such as MusyX (originally called MOsys FX Surround), with collaboration with Dolby Labs, THX, and AMD (then known as ATI).[ citation needed ]
His games include the Turrican and Star Wars Rogue Squadron series, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures , and ports of International Superstar Soccer Deluxe and Contra III: The Alien Wars . He also served on the board of the IGDA [ citation needed ] of the Game Developers Conference [ citation needed ].
Between 1993 and 2000, he was a freelancer for the German version of the video game magazine Total! . [5]
At the 2007 Games Convention Developers Conference, Eggebrecht criticized the ESRB for random processing in the guidelines to the development of Lair, and called for improvement to the system. [6]
Factor 5 closed in 2008 due to financial issues. [7] In 2010, Eggebrecht and other former Factor 5 employees founded the mobile game studio TouchFactor. [8] Factor 5 was resurrected in 2017, and it reacquired the rights to the Turrican franchise. [9]
In 2019 Eggebrecht joined Epic Games as Director of Online Technology. [10]
A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.
A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software industry.
The 64DD is a magnetic floppy disk drive peripheral for the Nintendo 64 game console developed by Nintendo. It was announced in 1995, prior to the Nintendo 64's 1996 launch, and after numerous delays was released in Japan on December 13, 1999. The "64" references both the Nintendo 64 console and the 64MB storage capacity of the disks, and "DD" is short for "disk drive" or "dynamic drive".
The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
Unreal Engine (UE) is a series of 3D computer graphics game engines developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game Unreal. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres of games and has seen adopted by other industries, most notably the film and television industry. Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual reality platforms.
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Retro Studios, Inc. is an American video game developer and subsidiary of Nintendo based in Austin, Texas. The studio is best known for its work on the Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong Country series, and has contributed to several other Nintendo-developed projects, such as Mario Kart 7.
Factor 5 GmbH is an independent software and video game developer. The company was co-founded by five former Rainbow Arts employees in 1987 in Cologne, Germany, which served as the inspiration behind the studio's name.
Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, commonly abbreviated as Nintendo EAD and formerly known as Nintendo Research & Development No.4 Department, was the largest software development division within the Japanese video game company Nintendo. It was preceded by the Creative Department, a team of designers with backgrounds in art responsible for many different tasks, to which Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka originally belonged. Both served as managers of the EARD studios and were credited in every game developed by the division, with varying degrees of involvement. Nintendo EAD was best known for its work on games in the Donkey Kong, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Wii series.
Turrican is a 1990 video game developed by Manfred Trenz. It was developed for the Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts, and was ported to other systems later. In addition to concept design and character creation, Trenz programmed Turrican on the Commodore 64. A sequel, Turrican II: The Final Fight, followed in 1991 for the Commodore 64 and other platforms.
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader is an action game co-developed by Factor 5 and LucasArts and is the second of the Rogue Squadron series. It was published by LucasArts and released as a launch title for the GameCube in North America on November 18, 2001, and Europe on May 3, 2002. Set in the fictional Star Wars galaxy, the game spans all three original trilogy Star Wars films. The player controls either Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles. As the game progresses, Skywalker, Antilles and the Rebel Alliance fight the Galactic Empire in ten missions across various planets.
Mega Turrican is a run and gun video game, developed by Factor 5 in 1993 and marketed by Data East in 1994. Part of the Turrican series, it was designed for the Mega Drive/Genesis, and later followed by an Amiga port converted by Kaiko and Neon Studios under the title of Turrican 3: Payment Day. Despite not being the original, the Amiga version was the one that was first commercially released in 1993, published by Rainbow Arts in Germany and Renegade in the rest of Europe. The Mega Drive version did not have a publisher and stayed unreleased from spring 1993 until 1994, when Data East took over its worldwide distribution. Data East itself released the game in North America, and contracted Sony Imagesoft for the game's distribution in Europe.
The Games Convention (GC), sometimes called the Leipzig Games Convention, was an annual video game event held in Leipzig, Germany, first held in 2002. Besides video games, the event also covers Infotainment, Hardware, and Edutainment. Its concept was created by the Leipziger Messe in cooperation with Bundesverband für Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware amongst others. The 2010 Gamescon was held August 18 to August 22.
Hollywood is the name of the graphics processing unit (GPU) used in Nintendo's Wii video game console. It was designed by ATI, and is manufactured using the same 90 nm or 65 nm CMOS process as Broadway, the Wii's central processing unit. Very few official details about Hollywood were released to the public by Nintendo, ATI, or any other company involved in the Wii's development. The Hollywood GPU is reportedly based on the GameCube's Flipper GPU and is clocked 50% higher at 243 MHz, though these clock rates have never been officially confirmed.
Germany has the second-largest video games player base in Europe, with 44.3 million gamers in 2018, after Russia. Consumers in Germany spent €5.87 billion on video games over the course of 2021, a 3 percent year-on-year increase from 2020. The video game market in Germany grew by 6 percent to €6.2 billion in 2019.
Katakis is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed for the Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts in 1987, and converted to the Amiga by Factor 5 in 1988. It was re-released as Denaris in 1989. The name Katakis has a Greek origin and was found in a phone book in Gütersloh, Germany. The name Denaris was created by a random name generator, and by coincidence, matches a Greek name as well.
Nintendo 64 Game Pak is the brand name of the ROM cartridges that store game data for the Nintendo 64. As with Nintendo's previous consoles, the Game Pak's design strategy was intended to achieve maximal read speed and lower console manufacturing costs through not integrating a mechanical drive, with a drawback of lower per dollar storage capacity compared to a disk. From the console's first year from late 1996 through 1997, Game Pak sizes were 4 to 12 megabytes with a typical third party retail price of US$75.99, then available in 32 megabytes in 1998, and finally 64 megabytes from 1999 onwards.
Psycho-Nics Oscar is a 1987 side-scrolling run and gun arcade video game developed and published by Data East in Japan and North America. Set in the futuristic Ordio City, players assume the role of the titular mecha to fight against enemy invaders. Headed by Akira Sakuma, the title was developed by most of the same team that would later work on several projects at Data East. It received positive reception since its release from critics and has been cited as an influence for Turrican. The rights to the title are currently owned by G-Mode.
Super Turrican is a video game in the Turrican series for the NES released in 1992.
