11 Facts About Epyx

Epyx, Inc was a video game developer and publisher active in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Epyx was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before renaming the company to match in 1983.

Epyx published a long series of games through the 1980s.

Epyx left the company to start Free Fall Associates in 1981, leaving Connelley to lead what was now a large company.

Connelley clashed with new management, left Epyx, and formed his own development team, The Connelley Group with all of the programmers going with him, but continued to work under the Epyx umbrella.

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Commodore 64, Epyx made the Fast Load cartridge which enables a fivefold speedup of floppy disk drive accesses through Commodore's very slow serial interface.

In 1987, Epyx faced an important copyright infringement lawsuit from Data East USA regarding Epyx's Commodore 64 video game World Karate Championship.

Epyx appealed the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who reversed the judgment and ruled in favor of Epyx, stating that copyright protection did not extend to the idea of a tournament karate game, but specific artistic choices not dictated by that idea.

Epyx had become heavily dependent on the Commodore 64 market, which accounted for the bulk of its revenues most years, but by 1988 the C64 was an aging machine now in its sixth year and the focus of computer gaming was shifting to PC compatibles and 16-bit machines.

Epyx were unable to fulfill its contract with Atari to finish developing Lynx hardware and software, and the latter withheld payments that the former needed.

Epyx had shrunk from 145 employees in 1988 to fewer than 20 by the end of 1989.