Lobotomy Software

Lobotomy Software, Inc. was an American video game company responsible for the Sega Saturn ports of Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, and the original game PowerSlave (titled Exhumed in Europe).

History
Lobotomy Software was founded in 1993, when a group of friends working at Nintendo of America left to form their own company, becoming the creative department of Lobotomy, with the engineering talent coming from Manley & Associates (Manley & Associates was later acquired by Electronic Arts in 1996, renamed Electronic Arts Seattle, and subsequently shut down in 2002). They originally worked out of co-founder Paul Lange's apartment, but after a few months set up an office in Redmond, Washington. The team began working on various game demos, one of which later became the first-person shooter game, PowerSlave.

PowerSlave was similar to Doom, though it featured an Egyptian theme. Shortly after PowerSlave was released, Sega secured the rights from GT Interactive to publish Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Sega originally handed the projects to two other developers, but were unhappy with their work. Once the media buzz around PowerSlave started to heat up, Sega saw potential in Lobotomy Software and let them work on the two games. Deadlines for the two games were set just a few months apart, and as such their development considerably overlapped.

The Sega Saturn ports of Quake and Duke Nukem 3D both used the SlaveDriver engine Lobotomy had created for the console versions of PowerSlave and were well received. Lobotomy Software had ported Quake to the Sony PlayStation, but could not find a publisher, which exasperated their financial troubles.

In 1998, Lobotomy Software was acquired by the now defunct Crave Entertainment and renamed "Lobotomy Studios". The team worked on a Caesar's Palace gambling game for the Nintendo 64, but after a year of development, the game was postponed and eventually cancelled. At that point, Lobotomy Studios was closed and employees were let go or given the option to be relocated to another position at Crave Entertainment. The next title that the team would have worked on was a sequel to PowerSlave simply titled "PowerSlave 2", which was going to be a Third person shooter and using a different game engine.