Digital Eclipse was founded in 1992 by Andrew Ayre, Hans Kim, John Neil, and Howard Fukuda. The company's first offices were opened on a "nondescript, factory-filled" street in
Emeryville, California, where Ayre (a native of
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador) had moved following his graduation from
Harvard University to live with his girlfriend. Initially a technology
startup company, Digital Eclipse soon found that its software would be useful in the
video game industry, and turned to game development instead. For these games, Digital Eclipse developed an
interpreter that emulated the games' arcade machines'
chipset, including the
Motorola 6809 central processing unit. This approach was meant to have the emulations act true to the original versions of these games, and not carry any imperfections direct
ports could have introduced. Digital Eclipse also opened a second studio in
Vancouver, Canada. In February 2001, the company announced its move into the games market for "wireless Web" devices, hiring Scott Nisbet as director of wireless gaming, as well as Bruce Binder as Nisbet's consultant. In 2003, Digital Eclipse merged with
ImaginEngine, creating
Backbone Entertainment; while ImaginEngine remained an independent studio within that structure, Digital Eclipse's studios became Backbone Emeryville and Backbone Vancouver, respectively. By this point, Digital Eclipse had produced 70 games on 11 different platforms. In May 2007, the new studio, including Ayre and several former Digital Eclipse employees, spun off from Backbone and became
Other Ocean Interactive, aiming at showcasing Digital Eclipse's former traits in a smaller fashion. Backbone Vancouver was mostly dismantled in September 2008 and closed entirely in May 2009, while Backbone laid off the majority of its Emeryville-based staff in October 2012. On June 8, 2015, after acquiring the Digital Eclipse name, Other Ocean's parent company, Other Ocean Group, announced that it had reformed Digital Eclipse as part of its Other Ocean Emeryville studio. Co-founders include Ayre, Mike Mika—who had acted as
technical director for the original Digital Eclipse—and former
Gamasutra writer
Frank Cifaldi. Cifaldi would leave Digital Eclipse around 2020 to work on the
Video Game History Foundation full time.
Atari SA announced it would acquire Digital Eclipse in October 2023 for $4 million in cash and newly issued
ordinary shares worth $2.5 million, alongside a possible
earn-out of up to $13.5 million. Atari closed the deal by November 6, 2023. == Eclipse Engine ==