Vicarious Visions

Blizzard Albany (formerly Vicarious Visions Inc.) is an American video game developer founded in 1991 by brothers Karthik and Guha Bala. The studio is located in Albany, New York and its game have accounted for over $2.5 billion in retail sales and over 40 million units of its software have been sold worldwide. In January 2005, Vicarious Visions was acquired by publisher Activision. In January 22, 2021 (4 months after Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is released), Vicarious Visions was moved from a subsidiary of Activision to a subsidiary of Blizzard Entertainment. On April 12, 2022, the studio was renamed Blizzard Albany.

Notable games

 * Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro (2001)
 * Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2001; Game Boy Advance version)
 * Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure (2002)
 * Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (2002; Game Boy Advance version)
 * Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (2002; Game Boy Advance and PlayStation versions)
 * Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced (2003)
 * Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003; Xbox Version)
 * Jet Set Radio (2003; Game Boy Advance version)
 * Tony Hawk's Underground (2003; Game Boy Advance version)
 * SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (2003; Game Boy Advance version)
 * Crash Nitro Kart (handheld) (2003)
 * Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy (2004)
 * Doom 3 (2005; Xbox version)
 * Tony Hawk's American Sk8land (2005)
 * Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (2006; Nintendo DS version)
 * Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (2006; PlayStation Portable and Wii versions)
 * Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure (2011; Nintendo 3DS version)
 * Skylanders: Swap Force (2013)
 * Skylanders: SuperChargers (2015)
 * Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (2017)
 * Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (2020)
 * Diablo II: Resurrected (2021)
 * Diablo IV (TBA)

Why They Rock

 * 1) The company has made lots of excellent ports.
 * 2) * Said ports are faithful to the original counterparts, fully utilize the hardware's capabilities, and don't make many compromises to the gameplay.
 * 3) * They were able to successfully remake the original Crash Bandicoot trilogy from scratch, despite having none of the source code.
 * 4) ** Learning the lessons from N. Sane Trilogy (where the physics are wracked in jump consistent levels), they successfully reused Neversoft's Tony Hawk's physics engine to make it similar to the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 designs in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, instead of the weightiness of Robomodo's THPS HD and THPS5.
 * 5) Vicarious Visions has worked on popular franchises such as Tony Hawk's, Crash Bandicoot, Guitar Hero, and Skylanders.
 * 6) Their original games, including Synnergist and Dark Angael, have also been well received.
 * 7) They have shown over the course of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy's development that they are happy to accept feedback from fans, and made tweaks where needed.
 * 8) Whenever they make a game, their intro logo is usually related to the game in a cool way, example is Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro where Spider-Man is walking down a building only to reveal to us it's Vicarious Visions logo.

The Only Bad Quality

 * 1) They are behind Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy, which are both bad games.