QOTD: Which Dead Companies Do You Miss?
We've come quite a long way in technology and general computing, and yet, relatively, we've only just begun.
Throughout the years, many companies have come and gone. Some companies died out completely, while others retreated to overseas business. Some companies still exist, but have exited the market that they were once famous for. An example of a company that is still very much around, but no longer does business in what we all recognize it for is Matrox. I remember when I wrote some of the first reviews of its products and was very much connected with Matrox on an engineering level. Now, the company is focused on business and enterprise products exclusively.
Another favorite company of mine was Aureal. It made the infamous Aureal 3D chip, which was on several cards, including the Diamond Monster Sound. At the time, when the concept of surround sound was just making its way onto the PC, and most people were confined to two desktop speakers, Aureal made a huge impact. Aureal's A3D API was very impressive in creating realistic surround sound from just two speakers. Aureal's intellectual property was eventually bought by Creative.
During those years, innovation was very rapid and great products appeared all the time. And who could forget 3dfx? I don't even have to explain what it did for the gaming community. For those who don't know, 3dfx was the company that brought high-performance true 3D graphics to the mainstream. I owned the very first Diamond Monster 3D--and every 3dfx product that was released thereafter. 3dfx's assets and intellectual property were eventually bought out by Nvidia and helped to create the Nvidia we know today. SLI anyone?
The question of the day is: Which dead company, or which company that exited, do you miss?
It can be any company, from hardware to software.
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Commodore, NewTek, Psygnosis - clearly you can see the age and genre I'm aiming at!!!
56k modem's, floppy disks? well not realy.
ok for real... 3dfx made me cry the first time i played quake 2 on it, to this day i think it is the single bigest jump in gfx any one cand has ever had.
one format that could have done it for me was mini disk, but i could never find any mini disk dirves for the pc. the last md's i beleave were 1.2 gb witch would have been a good step up from floppys and infact cd's. pitty about the lack of suport for it.
the good old nipple in the middle of your old old laptop keybord, i found to be very easy to use. todays tracker pads arnt to bad but alot levae you felling totaly peeved, E.G. lifting of 2 or three times just to get to the other side of the screen and picking up more than a few icon on the way. and yes you can tune it but when its not your's you just dont.
so who hear remembers the old school 5 1/2" floppys that were floppy. ahh the bbc master system got to love it. and the cartrigs simi like n64. see solid state storage has been around "forever"...
To extents and purposes, Commodore. I aldo mmiss Codemasters as they "were". EVERY micro-machines was incredible!
Voodoo!
Did Abit "died"? Than i miss it
Commodore, Codemasters,are still going well, although not as huge as they were of course, I do miss psygnosis they developed some outstanding games at the time, their graphics always seemed to be leaps and bounds beyond everyone else.
I wouldn't go back to a Voodoo card for example at teh expense of my HD4870 
Nor would i pine for an Aureal 3D chip at the expense of my Creative XFi 
There is a difference between nostalga and missing, for example I had great days on my Spectrum 16k (yeah a whopping 16KB memory) but I def wouldn't want to go back to 4 mins of tape loading only for the thing to crash again 
I have nostalig feelings for a lot of old equipment and software, but it doesn't mean I miss them too much
@ poster
funny how you ask a question of the day, and then immedialty answer it yourself , bit a 3dfx fanboy are we?
allmost as bad as fudzilla's nvidia newsboys.. those guys are getting paid by nvidia i think
companies i really miss? none really..
i do know the old compaq was good.. thats untill hp took over..
and the old x386 from ibm did great work too...
basically old the old stuff,
remember norton commander for dos?
that was when norton was still a respectable company.. afaik they are dead now.. all they do is make sure every new oem pc has their trash on it.. and everyone i know deletes it right away..
nah.. its not just a question about the past, wich companies we miss.. its also the companies that changed... changed so much they are allmost a new company
Ok, it's a software company, but Looking Glass Studios was easily the best game studio of all time. The Thief and System Shock lines are the best games of all time.
Loved my Voodoo5 for quite some time, was the perfect card to play CS on.
@Professor_Falken - NewTek are still going Yeah!, I checked http://www.newtek.com/ and its still there. Few key people have left over the years. Psygnosis are still going as SCE Studio Liverpool.
How on earth are they still going? Awful, Awful cookie cutter games.
@mi1ez - Codemasters
I'd like team17 back (and not just making worms games)- the art work of Rico Holmes, Music of Alister Brimble, all held together by the code of Andreas Tadic. Great days. No idea what they need 70 staff for these days. Mobile phone games and worms I guess.
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Bullfrog, needs to be added- It's been downhill for Peter since Black and White and Fabel. (I rather enjoyed Fabel - but just like landing at Narita airport in Japan we can all appreciate some well polished floors /flaws). Of course can’t mention Japan without thinking of R-Type made by Irem.
A company that was extremely great was looking glass. System Shock2 and Thief1,2. MAIGC!
I was going to stop; but Cinemaware just popped into my head. After a look at their website I see that they are still going; but not up to much? Bitmap bros (all their Amiga games). Core design for corporation. They are still going as Eidos / Rebellion – but as I don't like Lara Croft / platform games (mainly cos I’m crap at them). It doesn’t make difference.
Look, this is all very easy - Every Amiga game made was some how better – not altered beast – but they were all better – I miss those companies. The people who made those games learnt their craft of spectrums and 8bit machines.
The Geeks of tomorrow can’t learn these skills on consoles and everything is too locked down for freedom / invention to happen. (Wow I’m off topic – this post dates me too much.)
To sum up piracy didn’t kill the business as much as DRM in hardware and software will. EA is crap.
I think most of use who posted here are in their 30s.
AND Bejams and Woolworths
^^ Nah, Woolworths were sh111t
Acorn. I *REALLY* wish they'd been more business and marketing savy and had better foresight through the late 80's and early 90's. They wasted too many opportunities with a basis of really great hardware and O/S in the Archimedes and RiscPC, but never built on it successfully. They were too happy to sit back with their traditional UK based education market and not push forward into graphics, music, development, business and workstation use. Then ARM was spun off and turned into arguably the most successful chip design company ever and are still going strong. Where did it all go wrong?
I loved my Commodore 64 too, but for me Acorn could have had what Apple are doing in the desktop/laptop space today.
Sinclair, Commodore, Acorn, Microsoft. Okay, MS aren't dead, but they might as well have been over the past few years for the dribble they have produced.
Aureal. For many, many reasons.
Diamond. Best vga's, best modem's, best of everything.. untill was bought by S3.
Abit. (Oh, that fantastic NF7-S!)
Epox.
Quantum.
Looking Glass Studios. Nothing beats Thief 1&2.
Amiga. Best os kernel and more.
3dfx. 3D gaming would be much better if they didn't die.
BenQ dvd recorders(the real ones with Nexperia chipset, not the Lite On clones)