FarSight Studios

Jay Obernolte founded FarSight in 1988 while still a student at Caltech.^[1] He first learned to program on an Apple II as a child and went to college to study computer engineering. While there, Obernolte was hired by Nintendo, who had recently entered the American video game console market and needed English-language programmers to create games. FarSight Studios' first release was a coloring and animation application, Videomation, for the NES in 1991.^[2] They then released a similar game for Sega, Art Alive!^[3] In 1992, the company moved to Big Bear.^[4] During the 1990s, FarSight Studio's initial success was based on a series of first party football games for Sega. In 2002, the NFL decided to limit the licenses for their brand, forcing FarSight's publisher Konami to stop producing NFL games.^[1]

In the 2000s, FarSight transitioned to creating a series of games based on sports and arcade activities. In 2003, they partnered with publisher Crave Entertainment to create the rolling puzzle game Mojo!^[5] While reviews were mixed, FarSight studios were able to leverage Mojo's game engine to create a series of games that recreated existing pinball machines.^[5][6][1] They subsequently released Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection in 2004, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection in 2008, their best-known pinball game The Pinball Arcade in 2012, and Stern Pinball Arcade in 2016.^[7][8]

By 2013 the company had grown to over 30 employees with a two-story building in Big Bear Lake. As of 2024, Obernolte still headed the company, but no longer oversees day to day operations.^[2]

FarSight Studios has released four video games that have recreated dozens of pinball machines. The re-creation of pinball machines was described as a form of curation and preservation.^[9][10] For their first game they sought the licenses to existing pinball machine designs, citing a hesitance to develop original pinball designs when existing games already had the necessary creativity and complexity to be successful.^[10] FarSight met with Pinball Hall of Fame founder, Tim Arnold, who advised that Gottlieb would be the easiest and most affordable company to obtain licenses from.^[1] Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection was developed and released in 2004 (two years before actual the Pinball Hall of Fame opened). FarSight again partnered with Crave Entertainment to publish the game.^[7] Surprised at how successful this was they obtained the more expensive Williams license and released Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection in 2008. This received positive critical reviews, but had limited commercial success with disappointing sales.^[1]

Bobby King was the lead designer for The Pinball Arcade and this was the first game FarSight Studios self-published in February 2012.^[11] For this a more extensive licensing agreement was agreed with Williams, the Gottlieb contract was extended, and a new license was signed with Stern.^[1] To cover the $55,000 licensing fee to recreate The Twilight Zone pinball machine, FarSight launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised $75,000 from more than 2,300 backers. The additional funds were used to acquire more licenses.^[12] Unlike prior games, The Pinball Arcade used ROM emulation to recreate the original software. Designers also disassembled physical pinball machines to photograph individual parts as part of the digital conversion.^[9] The first season of the game included 22 tables.^[13] By 2013 The Pinball Arcade had been downloaded over 7,000,000 times.^[1] In 2014, King stated that the company was exploring creating original pinball games.^[10]

They are an official licensed developer for numerous home and handheld consoles including the Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and Move, PlayStation 2, PSP, and PlayStation Vita;^[14] the Microsoft Xbox, Xbox 360, and Kinect; as well as the Nintendo Wii, Wii U, DS, and 3DS. In September 2018, FarSight announced that they will also be developing several pinball tables for the Oculus Rift.^[15]

Stern Pinball Arcade was released in 2016, with tables from Stern Pinball.^[16][8] Users could play Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for free while additional games, including Starship Troopers and Ripley's Believe It or Not!, would be priced at $5 to $10 per game.^[16]

In May 2018, FarSight announced that they would no longer produce games licensed from Williams and Bally, leading to a loss of 61 tables from The Pinball Arcade catalog,^[17] and announced they will focus mainly on tables under the Stern Pinball license.^[18][19]

Game Party was developed in 2007, incorporating classic games of skill. It was originally developed by Midway Games who entered a publishing agreement with FarSight to design the actual game. The development process took six months^[4]

FarSight Studios have also released official games based on PBA Pro Bowling from 2019,^[20][21] Cornhole in 2023, and Pickleball in 2024.^[22][23]

This is a sortable table of computer and video games produced by FarSight Studios, in alphabetical order.