Gremlin Industries

An arcade game of Star Trek made by Sega Electronics.

Gremlin was founded in 1970 as a contract engineering firm by Harry Frank Fogleman and Carl E. Grindle.[1] The company was intended to be named "Grindleman Industries" as a portmanteau of their last names, but an employee of the Delaware Secretary of State's office misheard the name over the phone, so the company was incorporated as Gremlin instead.[2] In 1973, Gremlin became a manufacturer of coin-operated wall games with their first release Play Ball (1973).[3] Gremlin joined the video game industry in 1976 by releasing its first video arcade game entitled Blockade (1976).[4]

In 1978, Gremlin was acquired by Sega Enterprises Inc. and their games acquired the label of Gremlin/Sega or Sega/Gremlin.[5] Following the Sega purchase, Gremlin released games from both Sega and other Japanese companies. Among these video games were Namco's Gee Bee (1978), Nichibutsu's Moon Cresta (1980) and Super Moon Cresta (1980), Nintendo's Space Firebird (1980), and Konami's Frogger (1981).

In 1981, Gremlin leased the first building in Rancho Bernardo's Technology Park, which they moved into in 1982 as their main manufacturing facility. The estimated cost of the building was US$10 million and was the plant where games like Zaxxon (1982), Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator (1983), and Congo Bongo (1983) were manufactured.[6][7][8]

In 1982, the name of the company was changed to Sega Electronics to better strengthen the Sega brand name in the United States.[9] However, the company entered a rapid decline beginning in mid-1982, due overproduction issues which ended the golden age of arcade video games.[10]

In August 1983, the arcade manufacturing assets of the company were sold to Bally Manufacturing. Through the purchase, Bally/Midway acquired Sega's technology for laserdisc video games, principally Astron Belt as well as later games Galaxy Ranger (1983) and Albegas (1983). Bally gained the right of first refusal to publish arcade games by the Japanese Sega Enterprises, Ltd. in the United States for two years, and released games such as Up 'N Down, Future Spy, and Flicky.[11]

The sale did not included other assets owned by Sega Enterprises Inc. including their American research and development arms populated by former Sega Electronics staff.[12] These development offered arcade games to Bally for publishing, though they were never released.[13] Sega Enterprises Inc's home division continued releasing games including ports of arcade games licensed from Bally like Tapper (1983) and Spy Hunter (1983).

In 1984, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. was bought out in a management buyout by Sega executives David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama with backing from CSK Corporation. This included the rights to the Sega/Gremlin video game back catalog which was later released in several game compilations. The wall game catalog was later marketed by a new firm in Las Vegas called Gremlin Industries with participation of several former Gremlin staff.[14][15]

After the sale of arcade manufacturing assets, Sega Electronics became a shell company (holding only Gremlin brand trademarks in several countries).[16][17][18] It was renamed to Ages Electronics in 1985 and later used as production company related to The Maury Povich Show. The corporate entity is currently part of CBS Media Ventures.[1]

Sega released emulated and playable versions of some of the Sega/Gremlin arcade games as vault material in the Sega Ages compilation series for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 and Sega Genesis Collection for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable.

Deep Scan was included as a bonus game in the Sega Saturn version of Die Hard Arcade.[19]