Challenger Games

Challenger Games, Inc. was an American video game developer based in. It was founded in August 1981 by Jerry Munoz as a subsidiary of his video rental store chain Metro Video Sales.

History
In 1979, Mexican-American entrepreneur Geraldo "Jerry" Munoz was the owner of pioneering video rental store chain Metro Video Sales. He knew nothing about the games industry, but after purchasing an for his children, he realized that there was money to be made. He began renting and selling Atari 2600, and  games at his stores, and after having success with that, made the decision to start marketing video games himself, and formed Challenger Games.

Instead of hiring away existing game designers from and, as some developers had done, Munoz placed an advertisement in the ', the ' and the . Sent a copy of the Mercury News ad by a cousin, a young programmer from named Tom Reilley contacted Munoz to pitch him Intergalactic Defender, a game he had developed over the course of one month. Munoz flew Reilley to and offered to buy Intergalactic Defender from him for $10,000, plus the position of lead developer for the nascent company. While initially hesitant, Reilley accepted and agreed to a contract to develop a second game, Catch That Train!. With Challenger Games now ready to go, Reilley was given the position of Director of Development; his first job was to hire 25 programmers to develop games.

Market presence
Challenger was among the first third-party developers for the Atari 2600. Intergalactic Defender was Challenger's best-selling title; with two million copies sold in the United States alone.

Knightress, designed by Tom Reilley, was the first major video game with a female main character.

By early 1983, Challenger Games released conversions of Intergalactic Defender for the Intellivision,, Magnavox Odyssey 2 and Theorysonic Tournament 1100 and was planning to release "a full suite" of games for several systems. Only three more managed to make it to market before Challenger went out of business in 1984.