Scavenger Inc.

Scavenger was a video game publisher that worked closely with GT Interactive. Based in Los Angeles, the company was unique in that most of its graphic specialists were members of the Amiga demoscene, which demonstrated that utilizing the potential of an underground talent pool of highly skilled self-taught coders, designers and musicians could be a viable business model. The demoscene background influenced many of the released or work-in-progress game projects, which were often technically innovative and accomplished feats that were previously thought impossible on the respective hardware platforms. For example, the Sega 32X 3D engine developed by Scavenger Team Zyrinx is still regarded as one of the best of its kind.

Among the teams working on games for Scavenger were:

• Zyrinx;
• Lemon;
• Triton (now Starbreeze Studios).

Scavenger went bankrupt around 1998. Many of the original teams' members are now active in other game companies, such as IO Interactive.

Scavenger, Inc., with offices in Boston, California, Denmark, England, Sweden, was a short-lived interactive entertainment company specializing in the development of video games for the IBM PC, Sega, Sony and the Nintendo home systems. The President of the company in 1996 was Daniel Small. In April of that year, Scavenger and GT Interactive Software Corp. entered into a publishing agreement for several titles:

• Into the Shadows, "a state-of-the-art fantasy adventure game" (never released)
• Amok
• 4x4 Frenzy, "a monster truck challenge" (never released)
• Scorcher

Problems occurred between the two companies concerning GT Interactive's failure to pay according to contract, and a lawsuit resulted. Debt forced Scavenger to close its doors in approximately 1997. Even though Scavenger was awarded $1.9 million in the Supreme Court settlement (Feb. 2000), it was not enough to resurrect the company.