Brøderbund (Danish for band of brothers) was a maker of computer games and educational software founded by brothers Doug and Gary Carlston in 1980. Their sister, Cathy, joined a year later. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Educational software is computer software whose primary purpose is teaching. ... Doug Carlston was CEO, chairman, and co-founder (with brother Gary) of Brøderbund Software, a software publishing firm that produced such hit titles as Myst and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company for $420 million, and the combined company was... 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

Brøderbund scored an early hit with the game Galactic Empire, written by Doug Carlston for the TRS-80. The company went on to become a powerhouse in the educational and entertainment software markets with titles like Fantavision, Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, Wings of Fury, Prince of Persia, "Orly", Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and Myst, the latter of which stayed in the top 10 list of PC games for years. Brøderbund also distributed the Print Shop series of desktop greeting card making programs. Galactic Empire was the first (and some would say best) game in the Galactic Saga. ... A TRS-80 Color Computer 2 TRS-80 (also affectionately or derisively known as the Trash-80) was the designation for several lines of microcomputer systems produced by the Tandy Corporation and sold through its Radio Shack stores in the late-1970s and 1980s. ... Fantavision was an animation program for the Apple IIe computer. ... Choplifter is a 1985 arcade game by Sega. ... Lode Runner is a classic computer game dating back to the 1980s. ... Karateka is a Japanese word for a practitioner of karate. ... Puccinis opera Turandot (1926) opens as the Prince of Persia is led to the executioners block, having failed to guess the riddles. ... Orly is a communes of the Val-de-Marne département in France. ... Carmen Isabela Sandiego is a fictional character featured in a long-running series of educational games and television shows in the United States of the same name. ... Myst is a graphic adventure computer game created by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. ... Print Shop is a basic desktop publishing software package developed in the early 1980s by Brøderbund. ... A greeting card is a folded card featuring a message of greeting or other sentiment. ...

Brøderbund was purchased by The Learning Company in 1998 for about USD$420 million in stock. In 1999 the combined company was bought by Mattel for the astounding sum of $3.6 billion. Mattel reeled from the financial impact of this transaction, and Jill Barad, the CEO, ended up being forced out in a climate of investor outrage. Mattel then actually gave away The Learning Company in September 2000 to Gores Technology Group, a private acquisitions firm, for a share of whatever Gores could obtain by selling the company. In 2001, Gores sold The Learning Company's entertainment holdings to Ubisoft, and most of the other holdings, including the Brøderbund name, to Riverdeep. The Learning Company is an educational software company, founded in 1980. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... 1999 is a common year starting on Friday of the Common Era, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Mattel Inc. ... 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Ubisoft Entertainment (formerly Ubi Soft) is a computer and video game publisher and developer headquarted in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France. ... Riverdeep Interactive Learning is a publishing house for educational online and CDROM products based in San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland, founded in 1995. ...

Brøderbund is now the brand name for Riverdeep's graphic design, productivity, and edutainment titles, such as the Print Shop, Carmen Sandiego, Mavis Beacon, and Reader Rabbit titles, and also publishes software for other companies, notably Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm. Edutainment is a recently coined term, a portmanteau, that expresses the union between education and entertainment in a television program, game or website. ... Carmen Isabela Sandiego is a fictional character featured in a long-running series of educational games and television shows in the United States of the same name. ... Mavis Beacon is an educational line of computer games, mainly focused on computer skills, such as typing. ... Zone Labs logo Zone Labs is a company that makes anti-spyware, anti-hacker, and anti-virus products. ... The Main Zonelabs Logo Zonelabs is a company which makes products, which protect your computer against hackers, spyware, and virus, with a powerful firewall (networking) system, which according to the company is made up of many layers for maximum protection. ...

Riverdeep refers to the division simply as "Broderbund", without the 'ø' character.

See also

• Category:Brøderbund games

External links

• Broderbund website (http://www.broderbund.com/)
• History of Brøderbund (http://www.classicgaming.com/gotcha/broderbund.htm) at Classicgaming.com
• Brøderbund profile at Home of the Underdogs (http://www.the-underdogs.org/company.php?name=Br%F8derbund)