Budcat Creations

Budcat Creations was a video game developer based in Iowa City, Iowa, United States and was a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision, though they formerly had partnerships with Electronic Arts and Majesco Entertainment. They were largely responsible for porting titles to non-target consoles. They had worked on a number of blockbuster gaming franchises, among them Guitar Hero, Madden NFL, and Medal of Honor. They have also produced a few original titles, including Blast Works: Build, Trade, Destroy and The New York Times Crosswords.

History
Budcat was founded by Jason Andersen and Isaac Burns, who met while working at EA Tiburon. In 2000, the two left to form Budcat in order to develop several ports of Madden NFL 2002 for Electronic Arts (EA).

The company went on to produce a string of sports titles for EA over the next five years, including entries in the NASCAR Thunder, NHL Hockey series, and FIFA Manager series, as well as the PlayStation 2 version of Psychonauts for Majesco Entertainment.

In 2005, Budcat moved to its ultimate location in Iowa City in order to facilitate expanding their offices. Budcat worked in partnership with Majesco Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Activision on multiple titles before being purchased by Activision Blizzard on November 10, 2008, where they mostly worked on the Guitar Hero brand.

Budcat Creations was shuttered by Activision Blizzard on November 16, 2010.

Trivia

 * In Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the Budcat appears twice; on the head of one of Metalhead's outfits, and as a guitar.
 * In Guitar Hero: Metallica, the Budcat logo, is the default band logo and it appears as a custom guitar in "Hero's Workshop"
 * The company's mascot is a cat whose head is similar to the video game controller.