Dynamix
Dynamix was an American video game developer and publisher that existed from 1984 ro 2001. The company was founded in 1984 by Damon Slye and Jeff Tunnell to help capitalize on Slye's first game. Although the developers were quite talented, the company got off to a rocky start and mostly ported existing games to MS-DOS. Around 1988-1989, they had their games published primarily through Activision, but then tried an ill-fated attempt at self-publishing. In 1990, Sierra On-Line bought the struggling Dynamix to get a stronger foothold in the 3D simulation genre which Dynamix was particularly skilled in. Tunnell left around the same time to form Jeff Tunnell Productions, but his games would often still bear the Dynamix name upon publishing. Sierra's influx of capital allowed Dynamix to expand their team of developers, and create more impressive games. Slye left in 1994 to pursue non-computer related interests, and Tunnell came back to lead the company in 1995. Sierra was sold to CUC International in 1996, who retained Dynamix. However, in 2001, CUC International restructured their software division and merged Sierra into Vivendi Games, and Dynamix was officially closed on 2001-08-14. Several of the developers went on to form GarageGames, who developed the Torque Game Engine used in Sierra/Vivendi games.
Personal
I first Dynamix game I ever played was Skyfox II: The Cygnus Conflict in the late 1980s, but the first one I remember being a Dynamix game was the DOS port of Stellar 7 because of their prominent branding, both games were owned by my cousin. Throughout my childhood, I played a lot more of Dynamix's games, primarily because of my love of Sierra On-Line and their closeness, but it wasn't until I got a lot older and started caring about video game companies that I realized how many of their games I played. My over all opinion of their games is that they tend to be exciting at first, primarily because they incorporated impressive technical advancements for the time, but they failed to stay interesting after the novelty wore off. I've played over a dozen titles from the company, but only ever beat one, and that was a bit of a slog.
Games
These are the Dynamix games that are important to me:
Links
