EPYX

In five years between 1983 and 1987, Epyx produced four games that defined what the Commodore 64 could be. Impossible Mission (1984) introduced the world's first digitised human voice in a home computer game - that baritone "Another visitor. Stay a while... stay forever!" - and paired it with 140 frames of fluid sprite animation that no other C64 game of the era could match. Dennis Caswell built the entire game alone. Summer Games (1984) launched the multi-event sports compilation format that would dominate home computer gaming for the rest of the decade: eight Olympic events, a flag-bearing opening ceremony, and 400,000 copies sold on the C64 alone. California Games (1987) became Epyx's best-seller, moving 300,000 copies in nine months on the back of Chris Grigg's extraordinary SID score and six distinctly Californian events. And Jumpman (1983) - Randy Glover's 32-level bomb-defusing platform classic - showed how much variety a single mechanic could contain when the level design never repeated itself.

Each of these titles has a story worth telling: who built it, how, and why it still matters. Read the full flagship deep dives → or browse the complete catalogue.

Jon Freeman and Jim Connelley founded the company as Automated Simulations in Sunnyvale, California in 1978, publishing dungeon-crawl RPGs for TRS-80, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit - including the Dunjonquest series anchored by Temple of Apshai (1979). In 1983 the company renamed itself Epyx and pivoted toward action and sports games. Jumpman and Pitstop II showed what was possible; the Games series, beginning with Summer Games in 1984, made Epyx the defining sports game publisher of the home computer era.

Between 1984 and 1987, Epyx produced Impossible Mission, Summer Games, Winter Games, World Games, and California Games - five years of landmark titles, each commercially successful, each pushing the C64 further. Then engineers RJ Mical and Dave Needle designed a revolutionary handheld - the "Epyx Handy" - that combined a colour LCD screen with hardware ahead of anything on the market. The cost of developing it broke the company. Atari bought the hardware, renamed it the Lynx, and Epyx filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989. The company continued publishing titles through 1992 and formally ceased operations in 1993. The full story is in the History section.