Lobotomy Software was an American video game company, best known for the game PowerSlave

Powerslave

Powerslave is the fifth studio album by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden, released on 3 September 1984 on EMI in Europe and its sister label Capitol Records in the US ....

(Exhumed in Europe) as well as the successful Sega Saturn

Sega Saturn

The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...

 ports of Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC . It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee...

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The company is no longer active.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

First-person shooter

First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...

 PC game, PowerSlave.

PowerSlave was similar to Doom though it featured an Egyptian theme and ran on 3D Realms

3D Realms

3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...

' Build engine

Build engine

The Build engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, the Build engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sectors, and uses simple flat objects called sprites to populate the world geometry with...

, the same engine that ran the PC version of Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC . It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee...

.

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

PlayStation

The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

.

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

Sega

, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...

 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.