Page 17 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #4

leasing a couple of lame games (with games. Hasbro’s Tonka division
some really strange controllers). Well, Hasbro even has a major once distributed the Sega
since Milton Bradley is also a Hasbro interest in the portable mar- Master System. And Hasbro
company, those titles could be avail- ket. The company owns the also has the future in mind
able if Hasbro ever decided to re- Microvision, the world’s first by announcing games for
release its classic consoles. programmable handheld con- the X-Box, PlayStation 2,
Avalon-Hill was a third board game sole, through its Milton Brad- Dolphin, and Nuon game
company but in a different league than ley division. (Hasbro doesn't systems.
Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. This own the Vectrex, which Mil- Hasbro also had a major
company produced games that ap- ton Bradley acquired when it impact on the way games
pealed to strategists rather than the purchased General Con- are displayed to the public.
family-oriented games being produced sumer Electronics (GCE). One of the games that Has-
by its competitors. And for a short while When the unit was discontin- bro created for the ill-fated
Avalon-Hill also put out a slew of Atari ued, all of its rights reverted Control-Vision was Night
2600-compatible games such as Lon- back to its original develop- Microvision Trap, a game that was later
don Blitz and Out of Control. Because ers. Hasbro also owns the (Milton Bradley) released for the Sega CD
these games weren't distributed as rights to two other portables: and one of the primary
widely as those by other companies, the Atari Lynx and the Tiger games which influenced the
Avalon-Hill 2600 games are generally game.com, furthering Hasbro's title as current videogame rating system.
pretty rare today. But since Avalon-Hill the Ultimate Videogame Company. After an unsuccessful early bid at
is now a Hasbro company, there's no When it comes to the modern con- joining the videogame race, Hasbro
reason why it couldn't re-release its soles, Hasbro again is no slouch. In has turned around to become a major
addition to releasing software for all of impact in both the current and retro
today’s three systems (PlayStation, markets. It has truly become The Ulti-
N64, and Dreamcast), the company’s mate Videogame Com-
Galoob subsidiary was responsible for pany.
bringing the Game Genie to America.
And if we really want to get technical,

game.com (Tiger Electronics)
catalog of games.
Tigervision’s River Patrol recently
sold on eBay for $800. Well if our sce-
nario came true and Hasbro Interactive
re-released the 2600, there would be
nothing to stop Tiger Electronics from
re-releasing its line of 2600 games.
After all, Tiger Electronics is a part of
Hasbro.
There are other third party 2600 ti-
tles whose current ownership is ques-
tionable. When Selchow & Righter
(publisher of Trivial Pursuit and Scrab-
ble) went bankrupt, their assets were
purchased by Coleco. Among them
was the Scrabble-based 2600 game,
Glib. And when Coleco went bankrupt
in 1989, guess who was there to pur-
chase its assets for $85 million? Has-
bro, of course. The belief is that Hasbro
does not currently own the rights to the
Coleco videogames. But if it doesn’t,
who does?
Thanks to the Atari acquisition, Has-
bro owns the rights to all of Atari's con-
soles. Hasbro owns other consoles
also and nearly every videogame con-
sole has benefited from products re-
leased by companies that now fall un-
der the Hasbro umbrella. Although
Hasbro's ownership of the Colecovision
is questioned, the console can play
games that were produced by Parker
Brothers. Intellivision owners have also
been able to play Parker Brothers

Classic Gamer Magazine Summer 2000 17