Spark Unlimited

Spark Unlimited is a game development studio founded in 2002 and headquartered in Sherman Oaks, California (USA). The establishment was started by Craig Allen, former Senior Vice President and General Manager of Jim Henson Interactive. He explored potential business partners at the Los Angeles Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in May 2002, and a team was formed co-founded and lead by Scott Langteau as COO (a former producer for Electronic Arts on the Medal of Honor franchise) and Adrian Jones as CTO, until February 2004, (also formally with Electronic Arts as a Senior Engineer working on many Medal of Honor titles). After negotiations, Activision became the exclusive publishing partner and the studio was born in early August 2002.

The group was housed temporarily in Santa Monica office space while waiting for a permanent home to be created to suit the group's unique needs by architect John Reed in Sherman Oaks, California. Spark relocated business operations to Sherman Oaks in March 2003.

Based on the experience on the Medal of Honor franchise, the team was put to work to develop a new instalment in the Call of Duty series. It became the third game in the series and the first one exclusively made for consoles, Call of Duty: Finest Hour, released in November 2004.

In August 2005, the studio sued Activision for a breach of contract, claiming to have signed for a second and third game, and that Activision abandoned the contract after the first title. The publisher immediately counter-sued. Earlier that year, in March, the studio had already announced to develop games exclusively for Atari and the next Call of Duty game for consoles was indeed created by a different team.

Spark Unlimited then remained silent until 2008, when they released two titles at once, the war shooter Turning Point: Fall of Liberty for Codemasters in February, which was received poorly by the press, and the fantasy shooter Legendary in October for Atari and Gamecock, with slightly better but still poor reviews.

The team also developed Lost Planet 3 for Capcom in 2013 and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z for Koei Tecmo in 2014.

The studio was closed on 5 May 2015.