Mindscape Group
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| Private company | |
| Industry | Computer software Software publishing |
| Founded | 1983 |
| Defunct | 2011 |
| Headquarters | Novato, California, U.S. |
| Revenue |
 €38 million (2005) |
| Subsidiaries | The Software Toolworks |
| Website | Mindscape.com |
Mindscape, Inc. was an international software publishing company, previously part of The Learning Company and later affiliated with Electronic Arts. As of 2004, the group had offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. It had an annual turnover of €38 million and employed 150 people. Mindscape published and distributed educational and lifestyle games and software. Its most notable titles include Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Lego Island.
Mindscape began in 1983 as a software publisher in Northbrook, Illinois. Founded by English-born Roger M. Buoy, the company established its early roots developing educational software for the TI-99/4A and the Apple II. It later branched out into entertainment software by becoming a Lucasfilm licensee, publishing the Indiana Jones computer games before they were taken in-house by Lucasfilm Games with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It also released text adventures tied to famous authors and a controversial game from Tom Snyder Productions called Sub Mission. The latter required gamers to purchase a replacement disk if they lost the mission three times.
Under creative director Sandy Schneider, the company became one of the earliest publishers of software for the Macintosh, publishing the seminal Chris Crawford game, Balance of Power. It also received accolades for its publishing of the innovative Apple Macintosh adventure games, the MacVentures, which were developed by ICOM Simulations, and included Déjà Vu, Uninvited, and Shadowgate. It also published the first 3D game for home computers, David Alan Smith's The Colony. It also published several of the early Macromind products, namely Graphic Works and Comic Works.
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