FarSight Studios (formerly FarSight Technologies) is an American video game developer established in 1988 by Jay Obernolte.
Jay Obernolte founded FarSight in 1988 while still a student at Caltech. He first learned to program on an Apple II as a child and went to college to study computer engineering. While there, Obernolte was hired by Nintendo, who had recently entered the American video game console market and needed English-language programmers to create games. FarSight Studios' first release was a coloring and animation application, Videomation, for the NES in 1991. They then released a similar game for Sega, Art Alive! In 1992, the company moved to Big Bear. During the 1990s, FarSight Studio's initial success was based on a series of first party football games for Sega. In 2002, the NFL decided to limit the licenses for their brand, forcing FarSight's publisher Konami to stop producing NFL games.
In the 2000s, FarSight transitioned to creating a series of games based on sports and arcade activities. In 2003, they partnered with publisher Crave Entertainment to create the rolling puzzle game Mojo! While reviews were mixed, FarSight studios were able to leverage Mojo's game engine to create a series of games that recreated existing pinball machines. They subsequently released ' in 2004, ' in 2008, their best-known pinball game The Pinball Arcade in 2012, and Stern Pinball Arcade in 2016.
By 2013 the company had grown to over 30 employees with a two-story building in Big Bear Lake. As of 2024, Obernolte still headed the company, but no longer oversees day to day operations.
FarSight Studios has released four video games that have recreated dozens of pinball machines. For their first game they sought the licenses to existing pinball machine designs, citing a hesitance to develop original pinball designs when existing games already had the necessary creativity and complexity to be successful. FarSight met with Pinball Hall of Fame founder, Tim Arnold, who advised that Gottlieb would be the easiest and most affordable company to obtain licenses from. ' was developed and released in 2004 (two years before actual the Pinball Hall of Fame opened). FarSight again partnered with Crave Entertainment to publish the game. Surprised at how successful this was they obtained the more expensive Williams license and released ' in 2008. This received positive critical reviews, but had limited commercial success with disappointing sales.
Bobby King was the lead designer for The Pinball Arcade and this was the first game FarSight Studios self-published in February 2012. For this a more extensive licensing agreement was agreed with Williams, the Gottlieb contract was extended, and a new license was signed with Stern. Unlike prior games ROM emulation was used. By 2013 it had been downloaded over 7,000,000 times. The re-creation of pinball machines was described as a form of curation and preservation.
They are an official licensed developer for numerous home and handheld consoles including the Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and Move, PlayStation 2, PSP, and PlayStation Vita; the Microsoft Xbox, Xbox 360, and Kinect; as well as the Nintendo Wii, Wii U, DS, and 3DS. In September 2018, FarSight announced that they will also be developing several pinball tables for the Oculus Rift.
Stern Pinball Arcade was released in 2016, with tables from Stern Pinball. Users could play Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for free while additional games, including Starship Troopers and Ripley's Believe It or Not!, would be priced at $5 to $10 per game.
The company is best known for its pinball games that focus on virtual recreations of classic pinball machines, such as The Pinball Arcade. The first season of the game included 22 tables. It was announced in May 2018 that FarSight will no longer produce games licensed from Williams and Bally, leading to a loss of 61 tables from The Pinball Arcade catalog, and announced they will focus mainly on tables under the Stern Pinball license.
Game Party was developed in 2007, incorporating classic games of skill.
FarSight Studios have also released official games based on PBA Pro Bowling from 2019, Cornhole in 2023, and Pickleball in 2024.
This is a sortable table of computer and video games produced by FarSight Studios, in alphabetical order.