Factor 5

Founded 1987 · Cologne, Germany; later San Rafael, California · Founders: Julian Eggebrecht,Four other former Rainbow Arts staff · First game: Katakis (1988)

Five former Rainbow Arts staff founded it in Cologne; it made Turrican II on the Amiga, moved to California to work with LucasArts, and pushed Nintendo hardware further than almost anyone with Rogue Squadron.

Factor 5 was founded in Cologne in 1987 by five former employees of the German publisher Rainbow Arts, among them Julian Eggebrecht. Its early work was on the Amiga: Katakis (1988), the Amiga version of R-Type (1989), the Amiga Turrican (1990), Masterblazer (1990) and Turrican II: The Final Fight (1991), which became one of the best-regarded action games on the machine. The studio developed a reputation for technical skill, particularly in sound and graphics programming. To work more closely with American partners such as LucasArts, Factor 5 set up a US company in San Rafael, California, in May 1996, and the core German team moved there later that year. The partnership produced Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998) for the Nintendo 64 and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2001), a GameCube launch title widely praised as one of the most technically impressive games of its generation. Factor 5 also built MusyX, an audio toolset and compression technology used on Nintendo platforms. Its later PlayStation 3 game, Lair (2007), was poorly received. The US company closed in May 2009 after the collapse of Brash Entertainment, the publisher behind its next project, and the original German company was liquidated in January 2011.