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Activision is known in the United States as the first "third-party" developer, getting its nose in the video game industry with games for the Atari 2600, and co-founded by four former Atari designers (David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Bob Whitehead and Alan Miller). Against Atari's publishing policies at the time, Activision was the first studio to allow programmers to take credit for the games they designed.
Not only was Activision one of the few companies to survive The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 (by which it acquired the catalog of its defunct competitor Imagic), but in 2007 it became the single largest third-party game developer in the United States (after its acquisition of Blizzard Entertainment, best known for Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo and thus becoming Activision Blizzard), surpassing Electronic Arts. Today, the company is best known for being the publisher of the Call of Duty series and games by Blizzard Entertainment, kicking off the late 2000s music game fad with the Guitar Hero series and for its controversial business practices, especially concerning the contractual dispute with Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward.
Pre-crash Activision games:
- Boxing
- Checkers
- Chopper Command
- Decathlon
- Dragster
- Enduro
- Freeway
- Ghostbusters
- Grand Prix
- H.E.R.O.
- Ice Hockey
- Kaboom!
- Keystone Kapers
- Megamania
- Pitfall!
- River Raid
- Stampede
- Starmaster
- Tennis
Post-crash Activision games:
- Battlezone 1998 (the 1998 FPS/RTS hybrid and its sequel)
- Call of Duty
- GoldenEye (2010)
- Guitar Hero (acquired original publisher RedOctane)
- Gun
- Heavy Gear
- Interstate 76
- Many Marvel games, starting with 1999's X-Men Mutant Academy, and most notably X Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance
- Activision currently and explicitly hold licences to produce games based on both the X-Men and Spider-Man comics & films, Ultimate Alliance being an odd one out as it involves the general Marvel Universe. This does not prevent Spider and the mutants from appearing in other games, however.
- Mechwarrior (Just the first two games; they lost the BattleTech license after that.)
- Sea World Adventure Parks Tycoon
- Shanghai
- Tombs & Treasure (published under the Infocom imprint, but not developed by the original Infocom company)
- Tony Hawk Pro Skater
- True Crime
- The graphical Zork games