Rainbow Arts

Rainbow Arts
Rainbow Arts Logo
Founded	1984
Closed	1999
Headquarters	Gutersloh, Germany
Manager	Marc Ullrich
Employees
Key People (choice)	Teut Weidemann, Bernard Morell, Chris Hülsbeck, Armin Gessert, Thomas Hertzler, Manfred Trenz
Turnover
Sector	Video and computer games
Website
Information	Merged with THQ in 1999

Rainbow Arts was a developer and publisher of entertainment software. Originally developing C64 games, it progressed to creating Amiga and PC-based games. It became one of the biggest computer development companies in Europe.

History

1984

The company was founded in 1984 by Marc Alexander Ullrich and Thomas Meiertoberens. Ullrich became the CEO while Bernard Morell took charge of production.

1987

In 1987 Teut Weidermann joined the company and became head of development because of his ability to bring desirable games to the company. The first was a friend's game called Sarcophaser, in which Weidermann developed the graphics & level design. At the same time Weidermann was working on an R-Type clone for the Amiga. While demonstrating his demo at a cracker meeting, a group called Lightcircle demonstrated theirs. Weidermann eventually bought the game from the group (known as Factor 5 for commercial publishing) for 25,000 DM (about 13,000 EUR). Meanwhile Manfred Trenz had written a shoot-em-up on the C64 called Katakis and the Amiga R-Type had its name changed to Katakis despite having nothing in common with Trenz's game.

1988

In 1988 the official R-Type license was bought by Activision and having seen Katakis, sued Rainbow Arts. A deal was made however that Rainbow Arts would complete the port of R-Type to the C64 and Amiga in exchange that Katakis could be re-released.

1989

Having agreed to create the port of R-Type, Katakis was re-released as Denaris. Following this, Manfred Trenz had started to write another shoot-em-up for the C64 this time inspired by Metroid: an 8-way scroller called Turrican. Half-way into the project with over 17 ongoing projects a number of Producers were hired: Boris Schneider and Martin Gaksch of Powerplay magazine. Schneider was assigned to all EA Lucasfilm game products and Gaksch headed-up the development of Rock'n'Roll.

1990

Another producer who joined at this time was Julian Eggebrecht, from EA Lucasfilm, who took charge of the Turrican development.

1991

Eggebrecht started the development of Turrican II immediately afterwards. Once complete Eggebrecht left to form a company with the name Factor 5 which moved to California.

1997

Rainbow Arts was bought by Funsoft in 1997.

1999

Funsoft was, in turn, bought by THQ in 1999.

C64 Games

Title screen of "Madness" (1986).

Loading screen of "Grand Monster Slam" (1988).

Level show from "Katakis" (1988).

Level show from "Turrican" (1990).

Animation from "Turrican 2" (1991).

Title	Date	Remarks
Australopiticus Robustus	1985
Madness	1986
Bad Cat	1987
Chip War	1987
Dulcedo Cogitations	1987
Elvin	1987
Jinks	1987
In 80 Day Around the World	1987
Soldier	1987
Street Gang	1987
The Baby of Can Guru	1987
The Great Giana Sisters	1987	Developed by Time Warp Productions
To Be On Top	1987
Bozuma: The Mystery of the Mummy	1988
Garrison	1988
Graffiti Man	1988
Katakis	1988	Ported to Amiga by Factor 5
Starball	1988
The Volleyball Simulator	1988
Warriors	1988
Arcadian	1989
Black Gold	1989
Circus Attractions	1989
Danger Freak	1989
Denaris	1989	A re-release of Katakis
Grand Monster Slam	1989	Developed by Golden Goblins
Hard 'n' Heavy	1989
Hurrican	1989
Mini Boulder	1989
Oxxonian	1989
Rock 'n' Roll	1989
Spherical	1989
StarTrash	1989
X-Out	1989
Curse of Ra	1990
Down at the Trolls	1990
Sunny Shine - On the Funny Side of Life	1990
Turrican	1990
Log!cal	1991
Turrican II - The Final Fight	1991

Collections

Cover of "5th anniversary".

• 1st CD-Edition (Collection)
• ANTICS (Collection)
• Highlights (Collection)
• 5th anniversary (Collection)
• Rainbow Collection (Collection)

Links

Wikipedia: Rainbow_Arts

• Rainbow Arts at MobyGames
• Rainbow_Arts at Lemon64