I’ve covered the history of several video game publishers over the years. Most of them published games for the Atari 2600, and they were forced to close down due to the North American Video Game Crash. Avalon Hill is a little different.
They were a tabletop wargame and role-playing game designer, as well as a publisher for other board games. From 1952 to 1998, a version of Avalon Hill produced and published board games and video games before being acquired by Hasbro. The company made video games from 1980 to 1998.
While most of their games were developed for computers, they also created five games for the Atari 2600. I wasn’t expecting to see them on a list of publishers for console games, and I wanted to learn more about them. As I’ve done with other companies, I’ll give a brief overview of their history, discuss their video games, and conclude with some reviews of those games.
A Brief History of Avalon Hill
In 1952, the Avalon Game Company was set up to sell the game Tactics. Like other game companies, this was a mail-order company. Due to the success of Tactics, the company was incorporated in 1958.
Due to someone else owning the rights to the name “The Avalon Game Company,” it was incorporated as Avalon Hill. The first game released under this name was 1958’s Gettysburg.
To help advertise their games, Avalon Hill created three magazines. Some were short-lived, while one lasted as long as the company was independent:
- The General – Published from 1964 to 1998, this covered everything from the company’s board games.
- All-Star Replay – A Quarterly publication that ran from 1977 to 1981. It focused on the company’s sports games.
- Heroes – Published from 1984 to 1986, this was focused on Avalon Hill’s role-playing games.
I couldn’t find anything that suggested they had an in-house publication for computer games. It appears that they left that up to the existing magazines for specific computers or the industry as a whole.
Eventually, Avalon Hill would create a video game division that published adaptations of their board games. This sounds like a great idea and is something that similar companies would do. In a move similar to Parker Brothers, Avalon Hill would try its hand at making games for the Atari 2600.
Unfortunately, their games were released from 1983 to 1984. In total, they released five games and then went back to focusing on computers.
Avalon Hill’s Atari Games
From June 1983 to March 1984, five games unrelated to their board games were released. This might sound like an odd strategy, but I’m pretty sure the Atari 2600 would’ve been a poor platform for those games to be released.
Its Atari 2600 games are fairly expensive when compared to other games on the console. Here is a list of them:
- Death Trap (Link to reviews)
- London Blitz (Link to reviews)
- Out of Control (Link to reviews)
- Shuttle Orbiter (Link to reviews)
- Wall Ball (Link to reviews)
There are a fair number of reviews for these games from 1983 and 1984. Four out of the five were well-received based on their gameplay, graphics, and Avalon Hill’s attempts to try something new. Their games were unique twists on existing styles of gameplay.
Two games, London Blitz and Wall Ball, attempted to use a first-person perspective in an effort to make the games appear to be in 3D. I don’t believe these were the first games to try this on the Atari 2600, but it was a rarity for the console.
Out of Control and Shuttle Orbiter were only reviewed once, according to what is on Atari Compendium. While the reviewer liked Suttle Orbiter, they didn’t like Out of Control. The same publication reviewed both games.
Those games were released in 1984, which helps to explain the lack of reviews. Most of the video game media had moved on to computer games by this point. A few publications still existed, but they were few and far between.
Almost every review mentioned how the game felt different from other games on the market. I can see what they mean, and it helps to tell the story of a saturated market. I can only imagine how annoying it would be for a reviewer to say the same thing about every game they play.
Computer Games and Joining Habro
Avalon Hill’s computer games were never a big success. They sold well enough during the 1980s, but fell off in the 1990s. These games didn’t achieve the same level of popularity as the other games in similar genres.
Achtung Spitfire! was the only game to achieve significant sales success. It was released in 1997, and by that time, the writing was on the wall for the company’s video game division.
Computer Gaming World reported in late 1998 that “no AH (Avalon Hill) game in the past five years sold even 50,000 units worldwide.” The article is about the sale of Avalon Hill to Hasbro.
It is a good breakdown of how larger companies were trying to consolidate intellectual properties. The author mentions that the games haven’t been selling well and that Hasbro was likely after the more than 300 board games that Avalon Hill had made and published.
The sale was for 6 million dollars, and Hasbro laid off Avalon Hill’s entire staff. They would move Avalon Hill around a few times, first to Wizards of the Coast in 2004 and then to Hasbro Gaming in 2021.
Wrap Up
Avalon Hill had a largely unmemorable presence in video games, both on computers and home consoles. Their board games were the meat and potatoes of the company, which is why Hasbro acquired them.
The few games they released on the Atari 2600 were different enough to stand out, but were released at the wrong time. You could say this about a few of the developers for home consoles in the mid-1980s.
This company stands out from the other publishers on the Atari 2600. They didn’t need these five games. Avalon Hill had already developed games for the Atari 8-bit computers and didn’t have games that could be ported to the home consoles at the time.
The games they created were creative twists on existing formulas, which critics praised at the time. They were in a similar boat to Parker Brothers, but were able to remain independent longer. Now, Hasbro owns both of them.
If you liked this post, please check out my posts about Parker Brothers and Wizard Video.