Lobotomy Software

Lobotomy Software was an American video game company, best known for the game PowerSlave (Exhumed in Europe) as well as the successful Sega Saturn ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake.

The company is no longer active.

History

Lobotomy Software was founded in 1993 when a group of friends working at Nintendo of America left to form their own company. They originally worked out of co-founder Paul Lange's apartment but soon set up an office in Redmond, Washington. There they began working on various demos, one of which became the first-person shooter PC game, PowerSlave.

PowerSlave was similar to Doom though it featured an Egyptian theme and ran on 3D Realms' Build engine, the same engine that ran the PC version of Duke Nukem 3D.

PowerSlave received enough success to help Lobotomy secure a contract to port the game over to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation.

Lobotomy originally wanted to port PowerSlave over with no changes but the weaker hardware of the Saturn and PlayStation compared to the PC made this impossible. Instead, Lobotomy decided to recreate the game with new level designs and a different engine, named SlaveDriver.

The console versions of PowerSlave were a success, especially on the Saturn.

Shortly after PowerSlave was released, Sega secured the rights from GT Interactive to publish Quake and Duke Nukem 3D. Sega originally handed the projects to two other developers but they were unhappy with their work. Once the media buzz around PowerSlave started to heat up, Sega saw potential in Lobotomy and let them work on the two games.

Both Duke Nukem 3D and Quake were well received.