| Actua Sports | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Developer(s) | Gremlin Interactive |
| Publisher(s) | Gremlin Interactive |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS |
| First release | Actua Soccer 1995 |
| Latest release | Actua Golf 3 1999 |
Actua Sports is a sports video game series published by Gremlin Interactive which competed with Electronic Arts EA Sports label during the second half of the 1990s, until Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames. The term "Actua" is a (seemingly marketing-related) play on Sega's line of "Virtua" titled games, which included Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing and Virtua Striker.[1]
The first game in the series was the 1995 milestone title, Actua Soccer, which quickly became one of the most important titles for the company. It was later joined by the rebirth of the Premier Manager franchise and the club version of Actua Soccer. In 1996, the first non-football game was released, Actua Golf, followed by the sequels Actua Soccer 2 in 1997, now endorsed by English international Alan Shearer and Premier Manager 98. The third installment in the Actua Soccer series and the Ninety-Nine edition of Premier Manager followed in 1998, the year a new title debuted in the series: Actua Ice Hockey, the official video game of the Nagano Olympic Games ice hockey tournament, followed by Actua Tennis in the same year.
After Gremlin was acquired by Infogrames, the series went into dormancy. The now-named Infogrames Sheffield House continued to develop sports games that functioned as successors to the Actua Sports games: PGA European Tour Golf, UEFA Challenge and Slam Tennis, which were all published by Infogrames in 1999–2000, 2001, and 2002 respectively, with Premier Manager 2000 releasing in April 2000. Infogrames shuttered Sheffield House at the beginning of May 2003.
In 2002, Zoo Digital Publishing, the video game division of ZOO Digital, purchased the Premier Manager franchise from Infogrames and began to release new titles in the series. A year later in October, the now-named Atari sold a majority of Gremlin's former assets to the publisher, who in Late-2003, re-released select titles including some Actua Sports installments on the PlayStation and Windows under the "Zoo Classics" budget range.[2]
- ^ "The Essential 50 Part 35: Virtua Fighter". 1UP.com. archive.is. Archived from the original on 2012-07-19. Retrieved 2018-01-08.
- ^ "Investegate |Zoo Digital Group Announcements | Zoo Digital Group: Acquisition".