The studio behind such titles as The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Prototype has returned under a new name.
New Radical Games describes itself as “Radical Entertainment + Hothead Games”, implying that the new company is the successor to both defunct studios.
Radical Entertainment was founded in 1991 in Vancouver and was acquired by Vivendi in 2005, then by Activision in 2008. By the end of 2013, the studio had essentially closed in all but name, with the Canadian government dissolving its incorporated status and the few remaining staff assisting on other Activision projects.
Hothead Games was a Vancouver-based studio which developed such titles as Penny Arcade Adventures and DeathSpank, before moving onto mobile games. It went bankrupt in late 2024.
Now, however, both studios appear to have been resurrected as New Radical Games, with Ian Wilkson as CEO and president, and Tim Bennison as COO.
Wilkinson was one of Radical Entertainment’s co-founders. After the company was sold to Vivendi, he left Radical in 2008 and moved to Hothead, where he served as the studio’s president for the next 16 years.
Bennison was previously a COO and studio director at Capcom Vancouver, then joined Hothead in 2020 to serve as its COO.
Although Wilkinson’s LinkedIn page states that he started as CEO and president of New Radical Games in December 2024 – around the same time as Hothead Games went bankrupt – the studio’s website appears to have only recently gone live.
The site says the studio is open for work for hire full game development, on mobile or console games. It also says it’s willing to co-develop with another studio, or to handle porting or remastering of an existing title.
As well as The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Prototype, Radical Entertainment’s other previous titles included The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Scarface: The World is Yours, Crash Tag Team Racing and the NES version of Wayne’s World.
As soon as the studio’s website was spotted online, fans of The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Prototype started taking to social media saying they hoped this was going to result in remakes or remasters of either game. As of now, there is no suggestion that either is in the works.
In 2023, The Simpsons: Hit & Run producer John Melchior claimed publisher Vivendi was given the option to make five more Simpsons games and turned it down, meaning it lost the Simpsons license even though work had already started on a sequel to Hit & Run.
“Simpsons Hit & Run 2 would have been done by Radical, [and] there was a medieval Simpsons game that Matt Groening pitched, which was being done at Stormfront after Lord of the Rings,” Melchior said at the time.
“The biggest crime was that Vivendi did not obtain the Simpsons licence, though they had an offer in. The Simpsons came back with an offer, five games for X amount of dollars, it was a really good deal, and Vivendi said no. After the success of Hit & Run.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.videogameschronicle.com ’
