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| Type | Defunct |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Defunct | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Quinlan, Texas , United States |
Key people | John Romero, Founder Tom Hall, Stevie Case, Brian Moon Lucas Davis |
| Website | Official website |
Monkeystone Games was a video game developer and publisher founded by John Romero, Tom Hall, Stevie Case, and Brian Moon. After its inception in July 2001, Monkeystone published several titles on multiple platforms.
Romero and Hall were co-founders of Ion Storm, and had previously worked together at Id Software on commercially successful titles like Doom and Quake . Case, who was Romero's girlfriend at the time, [1] had also worked at Ion Storm as a level designer. [2] The three of them all worked on the commercially unsuccessful video game, Daikatana , which went through a turbulent development process before releasing in 2000 to negative reviews. Case left Ion Storm in January 2001, [3] with Romero and Hall completing Anachronox before also leaving the company in July of that year. [4]
Romero, Hall, and Case founded Monkeystone Games in Quinlan, Texas [5] in August 2001, in order to explore the development of mobile games. According to Case, Romero became interested in the concept of mobile games towards the end of 1999, and wanted to see what was possible on handheld devices like the Pocket PC with a new company. [6] Romero elaborated that he founded Monkeystone with the intent of directly working on programming video games full-time alongside Hall and Case. [7] He noted, "At Ion we were mainly working in management, managing people, but not able to do what we really wanted to do, and we were kind of torn between it." [8] Joining the three were former Ion Storm employee Lucas Davis, as well as chief financial officer and chief operating officer Brian Moon, who previously worked for Ensemble Studios as their CFO. [9]
In October 2001, Monkeystone announced their first game, Hyperspace Delivery Boy! , [10] a Pocket PC title which began development in August 2001 and was released on December 23 of the same year. [4] They also announced a partnership with ZIOSoft to collaborate on a future title. [11] Following this, the company completed 2003's Congo Cube, which was first released on Windows but later ported to BREW and J2ME. [4] [12] [13] In August 2003, THQ Wireless announced that Monkeystone would develop a version of the 2001 console video game, Red Faction , for the Nokia N-Gage. [14] It was completed in October 2003. Monkeystone also published titles developed by third parties, such as Bust'em, [15] Argentum, [16] and Baseball Mogul 2003, which were all released in 2002. [17]
Romero recalled in a later interview that the reason he left Monkeystone was because he and Case ended their romantic relationship in the spring of 2003. [7] [18] Describing the breakup as the "worst experience" of his life, Romero sought to leave Texas to do something else. [7] Hall decided to join his business partner, so they both left the company in October 2003, leaving Davis to run the company in their absence. [4] Both Romero and Hall were hired at Midway Games the same month they left Monkeystone. [19] During this time, Monkeystone worked on a game based on TheChronicles of Riddick for the N-Gage that was eventually cancelled. [7] According to Romero, the company moved to Austin, Texas to assist Midway Studios Austin with programming the multiplayer mode for its first-person shooter game, Area 51 , enabling Romero and Hall to pay Monkeystone's business loan off in full. After Area 51's release in 2005, Monkeystone Games closed, with Romero and Hall each taking half of Monkeystone's employees with them when they both left Midway. [4] [7]
Their first in-house title, Hyperspace Delivery Boy! was first developed for the Pocket PC and released on December 23, 2001. The game was then ported to Windows, Mac, Linux and Game Boy Advance, although the Game Boy Advance version was never released. [20] Monkeystone also published titles by third parties such as Argentum, Rocket Elite, Bust Em, Night Shift, and others.
Monkeystone's second in-house title was a puzzler called Congo Cube. They initially developed Congo Cube for Windows, then ported it to the Pocket PC, Java ME phones, and BREW phones.
Their third in-house title was a recreation of the PlayStation 2 hit Red Faction on Nokia's new gaming deck, N-Gage. It was completed in October 2003.
Brian Moon left Monkeystone sometime in 2002. Stevie Case left Monkeystone in mid-2003. Tom Hall and John Romero left Monkeystone in October 2003 to work at Midway Games. One of their colleagues, Lucas Davis, was left to run the day-to-day operations until company closed in January 2005.
Deus Ex is a 2000 action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. Set in a cyberpunk-themed dystopian world in the year 2052, the game follows JC Denton, an agent of the fictional agency United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO), who is given superhuman abilities by nanotechnology, as he sets out to combat hostile forces in a world ravaged by inequality and a deadly plague. His missions entangle him in a conspiracy that brings him into conflict with the Triads, Majestic 12, and the Illuminati.
id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
Red Faction is a first-person shooter video game developed by Volition and published by THQ for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows in 2001, and Macintosh platforms in 2002. A version for the N-Gage was developed by Monkeystone Games, and the mobile version was developed by Blue Beck. The game was inspired by several works of contemporary science fiction.
Stevana "Stevie" Case is an American businesswoman. She is known for competing in the first-person shooter game Quake in the late 1990s, as well as contributing professionally to the video game industry.
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Daikatana is a first-person shooter game developed by Ion Storm. It was published by Eidos Interactive and for Microsoft Windows and Kemco for Nintendo 64. Players control a swordsmaster who travels through various time periods in an effort to obtain the eponymous Daikatana, a powerful sword tied to the fate of the world.
Alfonso John Romero is an American director, designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and designer for many of their games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Hexen, Doom, Doom II and Quake. His game designs and development tools, along with new programming techniques created and implemented by id Software's lead programmer John D. Carmack, led to a mass popularization of the first-person shooter, or FPS, in the 1990s. He is credited with coining the FPS multiplayer term "deathmatch".
Deus Ex: Invisible War is a 2003 action role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Xbox. It is the second game in the Deus Ex series. The gameplay—combining first-person shooter, stealth, and role-playing elements—features exploration and combat in environments connected to multiple city-based hubs, in addition to quests that can be completed in a variety of ways and flexible character customization. Conversations between characters feature a variety of responses, with options in conversations at crucial story points affecting how some events play out.
Ion Storm, L.P. was an American video game developer founded by video game industry veterans John Romero and Tom Hall, both formerly of id Software. Despite an impressive pedigree and high expectations, the company only produced one commercial and critical success, 2000's Deus Ex.
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Anachronox is a 2001 role-playing video game produced by Tom Hall and the Dallas Ion Storm games studio. The game is centered on Sylvester "Sly Boots" Bucelli, a down-and-out private investigator who looks for work in the slums of Anachronox, a once-abandoned planet near the galaxy's jumpgate hub. He travels to other planets, amasses an unlikely group of friends, and unravels a mystery that threatens the fate of the universe. The game's science fiction story was influenced by cyberpunk, film noir, and unconventional humor. The story features a theme of working through the troubles of one's past.
Hyperspace Delivery Boy! is a puzzle action game released for the Pocket PC on December 23, 2001. It was ported to Microsoft Windows and Linux. The game was the first title released Monkeystone Games, a small developer formed by id Software and Ion Storm founders John Romero and Tom Hall, and Romero's then-girlfriend Stevie Case. Much of the gameplay involves solving Sokoban-like puzzles.
Worms World Party is a 2001 artillery turn-based tactics video game. It is the sequel to Worms Armageddon in the Worms series by Team17. As with the previous games in the series, players take turns controlling their teams and using available projectiles, firearms, explosives, and equipment to destroy all opposing teams and manoeuvre across a specified and highly destructible map.
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a 2003 book by David Kushner about video game company id Software and its influence on popular culture, focusing on co-founders John Carmack and John Romero. The book goes into detail about the company's early years, the success of their franchises such as Doom, and the dynamics between Carmack and Romero and their different personalities. The book also focuses on Romero's firing and the founding and the eventual collapse of his game studio Ion Storm.
Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Ion Storm, published by Eidos Interactive, and released for Microsoft Windows in 1998. The game was originally developed as a spin-off of the mech simulation game G-Nome by 7th Level. Ion Storm acquired both Dominion and its lead designer, Todd Porter, from 7th Level for completion.
Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child is a first-person shooter video game developed by American studio Third Law Interactive and published by Gathering of Developers for Microsoft Windows in July 2000. It was also released later that year for Dreamcast following a port by Tremor Entertainment.
Michael S. Wilson is an American business executive, video game producer, and film-maker. Beginning his career at DWANGO as Vice President of Development before being hired to lead marketing and publishing at id Software in 1995, Wilson has subsequently co-founded multiple independent video game publishers, including Gathering of Developers, Gamecock Media Group, Devolver Digital, Good Shepherd Entertainment, and DeepWell DTx.
Romero Games Ltd. is an Irish independent video game development studio that was established on 11 August 2015 by husband-and-wife team John Romero and Brenda Romero and is located in Galway, Ireland. This is the ninth game studio Romero has established in his career, and currently it has released four titles.
