History
Tantalus Entertainment was founded in 1994 by programmers Andrew Bailey and Trevor Nuridin from Beam Software. [2] [3] It was briefly acquired by Perfect Entertainment in 1995, where the company was tasked with porting Stargate to SNES and Wipeout to Sega Saturn. [4] [5] It was sold back to the directors in 1999 and renamed Tantalus Interactive. Its first original game was South Park Rally , released for the PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 64, and Sega Dreamcast by Acclaim Entertainment in 2000. [6] [7]
By 2001, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy when Tom Crago joined as CEO. [3] Tantalus developed a game engine that allowed 3D graphics on the Game Boy Advance. It released conversions of ATV Quad Power Racing in 2002 [8] and Monster Truck Madness in 2003. [9] Top Gear Rally was released 2003, which proved to be a success. [10] It won 'Best Game' at the 2003 Australian Game Developer Conference Awards in Melbourne. [11] The team further made a name for itself by porting Unreal II to Xbox in 2004. [4] Bailey also won a 2004 AGDC award for his contributions to the CRIS GBA game engine. [12] That year, the company also announced it had established Tantalus Asia, a joint venture based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that would focus on developing games for mobile devices. [13] [14]
Tantalus began developing Anaka as a jump n' run title for the Game Boy Advance in 2003. [15] However, unable to find interest from a publisher, Tantalus and Act3animation made a 300,000 AU$ animated help entice investors. [16] It ultimately aired on Nickelodeon in 2005. [17] In 2006, a touch-only Nintendo DS demo was created. Players could control the character indirectly by touching the screen where they wanted them to go. It was a mix between a jump n' run and a traditional adventure game.
Tantalus then began developing for the Nintendo DS, releasing the successful Pony Friends game in 2007. It sold one million units in a year, making it the largest-selling single-format game developed in Australia. [18] The studio was the only independent developer that year to have three games among the 100 top-selling titles worldwide. [19] Crago bought out the company's shareholders and renamed it Tantalus Media. He then immediately sold a share to private equity company Netus. [3] [4] [18] A second studio in Brisbane was opened in 2008. [20] [21]
However, the 2007-2009 financial crisis proved to be disastrous for Tantalus and the Australian video games industry. In 2009, Tantalus closed its Brisbane office, [22] [23] while also making much of the staff in the Melbourne office redundant. [24] In 2010, CEO Tom Crago re-acquired the studio from Netus. [4]
In 2010, the company launched Straight Right, a new label that would target the core gaming market. It released Need For Speed: Shift 2 - Unleashed for iOS in 2011. [25] [26] [27] The label also released Wii U ports of Mass Effect 3 in 2012 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution in 2013. [25] That year, Tantalus was approached by Nintendo to develop the HD remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess . The game released in 2016. [4] [28] The studio ported Cities: Skylines to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2017 [29] [30] and Nintendo Switch in 2018. [31] In 2018, it was announced that Tantalus would bring Stellaris, a grand strategy game, to Xbox and PlayStation. [32]
In March 2021, Keywords Studios acquired 85% of Tantalus Media for US$46.8 million. [33] The two companies then formed Keywords Australia as a joint venture overseen by Crago. [34] In 2022, the company established Tantalus South in Adelaide and Tantalus North in Brisbane, joining Tantalus Melbourne. [35] [36] In 2024, Tantalus was among the studios that partnered with Google to develop games for the Fitbit Ace LTE activity tracker. [37] The company also developed new DLC for Cities: Skylines. [38] At the end of the year, Crago stepped down as CEO of Tantalus and Keywords Australia. [39]
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