Digital Eclipse Entertainment is an American video game company located in Emeryville, California. It was started in 1992 by Andrew Ayre and became successful by creating copies of arcade games for the Game Boy Color. In 2003, the company joined with ImaginEngine to form Backbone Entertainment. Some employees from Digital Eclipse later left Backbone to create Other Ocean Interactive. In 2015, Other Ocean Interactive purchased the Digital Eclipse name and restarted the company. This new version of Digital Eclipse became successful by making collections of classic video games. In 2023, Atari SA bought the company.
History
Digital Eclipse was founded in 1992 by Andrew Ayre, Hans Kim, John Neil, and Howard Fukuda. The company's first offices were opened on a "plain, factory-filled" street in Emeryville, California, where Ayre (a native of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador) had moved after graduating from Harvard University to live with his girlfriend. Initially a technology startup, Digital Eclipse soon found that its software would be useful in the video game industry and shifted focus to game development. Using their technology, the company created commercial emulations of arcade games, such as Williams Electronics' Joust, Defender, and Robotron: 2084. For these games, Digital Eclipse developed an interpreter that replicated the arcade machines' chipset, including the Motorola 6809 central processing unit. This method ensured the emulations closely matched the original versions of the games, avoiding errors that could occur with direct ports. All three emulated games were released as part of The Digital Arcade series for Mac OS in 1995.
Digital Eclipse found further success when the Game Boy Color was released. The handheld console used a central processing unit based on the architecture of the Zilog Z80, a processor found in many older arcade machines. While other developers focused on the more powerful PlayStation console, Digital Eclipse created about 60 games for the Game Boy Color. These included Klax, Spy Hunter, Moon Patrol, Paperboy, Joust, Defender, and 720°, as well as an original game, Tarzan, produced for Activision. Digital Eclipse also opened a second studio in Vancouver, Canada. In February 2001, the company announced plans to develop games for "wireless Web" devices, hiring Scott Nisbet as director of wireless gaming and Bruce Binder as Nisbet's consultant.
In 2003, Digital Eclipse merged with ImaginEngine, forming Backbone Entertainment. ImaginEngine remained an independent studio, while Digital Eclipse's studios became Backbone Emeryville and Backbone Vancouver. By this time, Digital Eclipse had created 70 games across 11 platforms. In February 2006, Backbone opened a subsidiary studio, Backbone Charlottetown, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, led by Ayre. In May 2007, the new studio, including Ayre and former Digital Eclipse employees, separated from Backbone and became Other Ocean Interactive, aiming to highlight Digital Eclipse's earlier work in a smaller format.
Backbone Vancouver was mostly closed in September 2008 and fully shut down in May 2009. Backbone also laid off most of its Emeryville-based staff in October 2012. On June 8, 2015, after acquiring the Digital Eclipse name, Other Ocean's parent company, Other Ocean Group, announced the reformation of Digital Eclipse as part of its Other Ocean Emeryville studio. Co-founders included Ayre, Mike Mika (who had served as technical director for the original Digital Eclipse), and former Gamasutra writer Frank Cifaldi. The new Digital Eclipse focused on video game preservation, and Cifaldi became the studio's "head of restoration," a role Cifaldi noted was a first in the industry. At the time, Cifaldi stated that Digital Eclipse aimed to become the video game equivalent of The Criterion Collection. Cifaldi left Digital Eclipse around 2020 to work full-time on the Video Game History Foundation.
Atari SA announced in October 2023 that it would acquire Digital Eclipse for $4 million in cash and newly issued ordinary shares worth $2.5 million, plus a potential earn-out of up to $13.5 million. Atari completed the deal by November 6, 2023.
Eclipse Engine
Digital Eclipse uses its own Eclipse Engine, a tool that helps convert the code from older games into a format that computers can understand. This format is then used by the Eclipse Engine to run the games on modern systems. Although converting older games into this format requires some initial work, this method allows Digital Eclipse to easily move the Eclipse Engine version to any modern gaming system, such as personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices, with little additional effort. The Eclipse Engine has been used in Digital Eclipse's Mega Man Legacy Collection and The Disney Afternoon Collection. It was mainly created by Digital Eclipse's studio head, Mike Mika, and Other Ocean engineer Kevin Wilson. The engine was developed from Other Ocean's Bakesale engine.