Vicious Cycle Software is a video game development company based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States.

History

Vicious Cycle was founded in 2000 by Eric Peterson, Dave Ellis, Marc Racine and Wayne Harvey after layoffs at the local MicroProse development studio (then a Hasbro Interactive studio) forced several game developers into finding other work. Ellis left the company in the Summer of 2000, but returned in 2005 to take a position as game designer. Racine resigned as Vice President and Director of Production in the Spring of 2005 to pursue other ventures. Vicious Cycle has released several titles for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, and PlayStation Portable systems as well as the Microsoft Windows platform.

In 2005, Vicious Cycle announced the opening of their Monkey Bar Games division. Monkey Bar Games is focused on providing mass-market games to gamers of all ages. Thus far, Monkey Bar Games has released video games incorporating licensed characters from Dora the Explorer and Curious George. A game was also released in late 2006 to coincide with the release of the Flushed Away animated feature film.

Also in 2005, Vicious Cycle announced the release of their Vicious Engine game engine. The Vicious Engine is a complete game development middleware solution for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo GameCube, Wii, and Microsoft Windows. The Vicious Engine is one of the first game engines to offer full support for the PSP and Wii platforms.

On June 20 2007, Vicious Cycle was acquired by D3 Publisher, making Vicious Cycle Software a subsidiary of D3Publisher of America and a second‐tier subsidiary of D3 Inc.

References

External links

• Vicious Cycle Software official site
• Monkey Bar Games official site
• Vicious Engine official site
• Vicious Cycle Software entry at MobyGames