Tom Fulp

Fulp was born and raised in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, on April 30, 1978. In 1991, at age 13, Fulp launched a Neo Geo fanzine called New Ground and sent issues to approximately 100 members of a club originating on the online service Prodigy.^[8] Using a hosting service, he launched a website called New Ground Remix in 1995, which increased in popularity during the summer of 1996 after Fulp created the BBS games Club a Seal and Assassin, after graduating from Pennridge High School. Eventually, this site turned into Newgrounds.com.^[9]

In 1999, Fulp created the game Pico's School in Macromedia Flash 3, before the launch of the scripting language ActionScript that subsequent Flash game developers would use. The game "exhibited a complexity of design and polish in presentation that was virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development" until then and has been credited both with helping kickstarting the Flash games scene and launching Newgrounds as a "public force".^[10][11]

Fulp co-created the Flash game Alien Hominid, which he later developed for consoles under The Behemoth, and the console game Castle Crashers.^[12][13]

Fulp received the Pioneer award at the 2021 Game Developers Choice Awards for the creation of Newgrounds and for being a trailblazer of the Macromedia Flash games that helped define a generation of indie developers.^[5][6]