Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon Nostalgia, and a Day of Going Down a Rabbit Hole
Originally Posted 12/11/23
So, today I was reminded of a game I used to play all the time as a kid. Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon
Someone even uploaded the game to Internet Archive and it seems to work
This led me into a rabbit hole, that I want to share with everyone so follow along:
Broderbund
The first thing I looked up was if the developers were still around, and if so what they were up to now a days. According to the wiki the company was bought out in 1998, two years after Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon was released. This is kind of wild to me given how fast things can change, but what's even more interesting to me is this tidbit:
> It attempted to purchase The Learning Company in 1995,[23][24] but was outbid by SoftKey, who purchased The Learning Company for US$606 million in cash and then adopted its name.[6]
> On June 22, 1998, The Learning Company bought Brøderbund for about US$420 million in stock
WHAT A UNO REVERSE CARD. I feel like I'm living for this drama from the 90s.
Also, this company still has a website apparently, so I guess they do exist in some form to this day?
The Learning Company
The Learning Company (which was bought by Softkey and then Softkey took its name) made a fair number of games that I recognize. Carmen Sandiego Games, Oregon Trail Games, PBS games (such as some involving Zoboomafoo) , and generally games aimed at helping kids learn. They did also create Soul Fighter though apparently which really threw me for a loop when I saw that. There isn't much for me to say for this company, other than I imagine their biggest claim to fame was The Oregon Trail.
Softkey and other companies
So, Softkey (which then became The Learning Company) was acquired by Mattel and folded into Mattel Interactive in 1999 apparently. Matel Interactive made things such as a Hot Wheels Game, and a handful of other things.
Matel Interactive lasted until about 2001. The wiki is kind of sad honestly. But it's interesting to me parts of the company ended up with Ubisoft:
>Mattel sold both Mattel Interactive and The Learning Company in 2000 at a loss to Gores Technology Group. The total financial losses to Mattel have been estimated to be as high as $3.6 billion.[6] Mattel's acquisition of The Learning Company has been referred to as "one of the worst acquisitions of all time" by several prominent business journals.[6][7
> In February 2001, Mattel signed a publishing and distribution deal with THQ for the Hot Wheels and Matchbox licenses,[8] and Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing for other major licenses including Diva Starz, Fisher-Price and Barbie.[9] That same month, THQ also acquired Mattel's computer rights to Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants and Rocket Power and Mattel's console and computer rights to The Wild Thornberrys and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.[10]
> In 2000, the ex-Learning Company and Mattel assets acquired by Gores were split up into three divisions - GAME Studios for video games, The Learning Company for educational software and Brøderbund for home software. GAME Studios' was sold to Ubi Soft in March 2001, taking all of the gaming assets formerly held by The Learning Company.[11] The Learning Company itself was acquired by Riverdeep Interactive Learning Limited in September 2001 and later acquired all of Brøderbund in August 2002.
Living Books
One thing Broderbund, and everyone else mentioned so far, has worked on is a series of games called Living Books. This also unlocked a bunch of nostalgia, but basically they're "games" where you'd follow some story (Like Dr. Seuss' Green Egg and Hams) as it was read to you, and there were some animations and things. Interestingly, there is a company that seems to be pushing these games still called Wanderful. It seems like it's primarily focused on mobile (primarily iOS) devices now, though it looks like they have a lot of the original games from back in the 90s (though, I assume updated maybe?) Even more interesting, it seems like they've just started putting some of their games on Steam. According to what I'm seeing, it was actually just released this year! So, it seems to me they're still active which is cool to see after all this time! They even still show the original logo in their branding which is neat
ACTUALLY, AS I'm WRITING THIS, HOLY COW THE WIKI FOR WANDERFUL IS TRULY RESTORING MY FAITH IN HUMANITY
> The company was founded in 2010 by Mickey W. Mantle, who oversaw the original Living Books technology development as Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer at Broderbund.[1]
> Mantle, CEO of Wanderful, assembled a small team of the original Broderbund programmers to create a new engine that could take the animation, graphics, sound and music from the original Living Books CD-ROMs and play them back at full-screen resolution on the iPad using a touch, rather than a mouse driven interface.[1] Mark Schlichting – creator[2] of the Living Books series – joined the team as Chief Creative Officer and developed touch-driven updates to the original mouse-driven interface.
So, maybe I'm reading into it too much, but it seems to me as if someone liked these titles so much, or believed in them enough from their time at Broderbund, they put together a team to bring back! Really feels like a Dude We're Getting the Band Back Together moment Wow it also just sounds like they literally just ported the older titles, which is fantastic these things live on! Also:
> Wanderful was acquired by the Jordan Freeman Group in January 2023.[4][5] On May 17th 2023, the acquisition was made official, along with Freeman's announcement of a partnership with Arthur creator, Marc Brown.[6]
So they are still very active, and it also explains why I pretty much only found Arthur books on steam so far. Holy shit, I didn't think any of these things would be really tangible today, but this is a fantastic find while typing this up! Doing a very basic amount of research, it seems like this Jordan Freeman Group is trying to make older games more accessible?. Hopefully they keep at it, and you can read about their Zoom Platform Here
Putt Putt Saves the Zoo
We're about at the end of the dive today. During all of this, Putt Putt Saves the Zoo came back to my mind. I loved this game as a kid, and have since been listening to this YouTube Video on repeat:
https://youtu.be/4MCdaTK1BaU?si=4Eg4kQOS-0Mq0y4N
Also, someone even put the game up on Internet Archive
The Internet Archive and closing thoughts.
Lastly, I just want to say how amazed I am with how much people have uploaded to the Internet Archive. It honestly blew my mind how many of these games I was able to find there. It makes me really happy to see these things being preserved somehow. Speaking of, in the Broderbund Wiki, there's this bit:
> In 2014, Doug Carlston donated a collection of Brøderbund's business records, software, and a collection of games that includes Myst, Prince of Persia, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? to The Strong National Museum of Play. The Strong National Museum of Play forwarded the collection to the ICHEG museum for preservation.[38]
So it's nice to see real places also preserving these things. I know the Internet Archive's future seemed iffy previously, but man I really hope it stays around because these things make me so happy. Also, I hope there'll continue to be ways to force Windows to play these old games. This deep dive has really made me realize how much video game companies were merging and changing hands in the late 90s earlier 2000's.
I hope you all enjoyed traveling down memory lane with me.