Rockstar Phoenix

Rockstar Productions, Inc., also known as Rockstar Phoenix (formerly Wild Coyote Productions, and Digital Imp Interactive) is an American video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Tempe, Arizona. Founded by brothers, Victor "Vick" Roth and Eugene Roth as Digital Imp Interactive in 1986, the company was one of Arizona's first video game developer. In 1995, after moving from Phoenix to Tempe, the company would rebrand to Wild Coyote Productions.

In 1998, Take-Two entered a deal with Wild Coyote in which the company would be the exclusive porter of Rockstar Games for Nintendo home consoles. In 2005, Take-Two would purchase the company outright. Today, Rockstar Phoenix still develops ports of Rockstar games for Nintendo consoles.

1986-1995: Early years
In December 2nd 1986, brothers Victor Roth and Eugene Roth had recently graduated from the Arizona State University in Technology. Seeing the recent success of video games, the two brothers founded Digital Imp Interactive three days later. The name "Digital Imp Interactive" had no meaning other than it sounded cool. The first game to be created by DII was a remake of Pong for the NES released in August 6th, 1987. Later on as the years came by, Digital Imp gained a name for itself after the company developed a platformer inspired by Super Mario Brothers known as Cary & Noah which was DII's second game ever made. Seeing the company's capabilities, Nintendo entered in a deal with DII in which Nintendo would not only distributed future DII titles, but also allow DII to use select Nintendo characters. The games that were apart of this deal included Super Mario Bros 2: The Original Japanese Sequel, Metroid Prologue, and The Legend of Zelda: The In-Between Story. However by 1991, Nintendo's contract with the company expired.

That same year, the company entered a distribution deal with Acclaim Entertainment. Digital Imp Interactive starting to halted production on original titles, and mostly came a licensed game developer.

1995-2005: Reorganization
4 years after signing a deal with Acclaim, Vick and Eugene Roth started to get worried about DII's reputation. As Acclaim not only forced DII to release seemingly rushed games but also the company didn't do well financially. In response, the two brothers moved their game development studio to Tempe, Arizona. This not only allowed new employees (i.e. students from ASU) but also helped the company to research more into video game development. On October 18th, 1995, Digital Imp Interactive was rebranded to "Wild Coyote Productions". The new name was made by Curtis Wilde, who stated in the 1997 E3 that he created that the name to express "local Phoenix pride".

That same year, Universal Interactive Studios signed a deal with Wild Coyote which allowed the company to not only have the rights to several Universal IPs but also gave them the rights to port UIS titles to Nintendo's then upcoming Nintendo 64. Despite UIS's original plans to not make N64 games. In a similar deal, Rockstar allowed Wild Coyote to make ports of their titles for the N64 in 1998.

Rockstar's deal with the company extended to the GameCube and is still going on to this day. However, The company's contract with Universal Interactive in 2001 when UI allowed other third parties to develop their games for the GameCube.

2005-present: Acquisition by Rockstar Games
Seeing the company's success thru their partnership, Take Two Interactive (parent company of Rockstar Games) purchased Wild Coyote Productions for $4.5 billion. The company would then rename itself to "Rockstar Phoenix" or Rockstar Productions, Inc.