After leaving the Bruce Artwick Organization in mid-1994, Randel and Combs founded Terminal Reality in October 1994, which required Randel leave Chicago where he had just finished up on his BSE and MS in
electrical engineering from
University of Illinois. The goal of Terminal Reality was to exploit
texture mapped 3D game engines, with only $1000, and working out of Brett Combs' home. During that time it was developing its first release,
Terminal Velocity, and pulled together $120,000, received advances on the game and were basically able to avoid giving up ownership and primary decision rights to venture capitalists. After that first year the company generated $1.2 million and nearly doubled it the second year with $2.1 million. Terminal Reality's first game,
Terminal Velocity, was a 3-D
air combat game, Brett Combs pitched to Garland-based publisher
3D Realms. 3D Realms was the new division started by the popular
Apogee Software known for its arcade style action shooters and titles such as
Wolfenstein 3D. Scott Miller was intrigued by Randel's technology and Combs' management. Scott later said in a Dallas Business Journal report that "They had the backgrounds and track records with proven experience to pull off the game they were pitching to us." Terminal Reality went on, after the success of Terminal Velocity with 3D Realms, to publish titles with
Microsoft such as
Fury3,
Hellbender,
Monster Truck Madness,
CART Precision Racing and
Monster Truck Madness 2. By January 1998, Terminal Reality became an equity partner and founding developer of
Gathering of Developers, a Dallas, Texas based publisher in which Brett Combs served on the Board of Directors. On April 11, 2018, Infernal Technology, LLC and Terminal Reality, Inc. ("Infernal") filed a complaint for patent infringement against Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft"). The asserted patents, U.S. 6,362,822 and U.S. 7,061,488, relate to lighting and shadowing methods for graphics simulation. According to Infernal, both patents have already survived an
Inter Partes Review challenge filed by Electronic Arts in 2016. On November 20, 2020, the company released
BloodRayne: Terminal Cut and
BloodRayne 2: Terminal Cut with Ziggurat Interactive. In June the game was released on the Xbox One and Xbox Series, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch. ==Technology==