The Behemoth's logo.
The Behemoth is an independent game developer company, founded by Newgrounds veterans Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin in 2002, along with John Baez, Brandon LaCava, and Nick Dryburgh. Their aim is to create games that harken back to the early days of 2D gaming, with influence from Metal Slug, Double Dragon, and other 2D genre-specific classics, mainly from the AES Neo Geo.
The Newgrounds Connection
A scene from the Alien Hominid Console game. Note how two player coop is included.
The company was founded after the great success of Alien Hominid, first released on Newgrounds. The prototype game has now been downloaded over 10 million times. Their second game, Castle Crashers, had also it's demo published on Newgrounds under the name Castle Crashing the Beard.
Games
The Behemoth's first game was the highly anticipated console version of Alien Hominid, which was distributed by O~3 Entertainment and was a hit with the gaming community, being released on the Xbox, Playstation 2, GameCube, Gameboy Advance, J2ME phones and the Gizmondo. A HD version was released on Xbox Live Arcade. Their second original title, Castle Crashers, is exclusive to Xbox Live Arcade, and was released in August 2008, and versions on Playstation 3 and Steam were released on 2009 and 2013 respectively. By June 2009, Castle Crashers had been downloaded over one million times. Castle Crashers, similar to Alien Hominid, had its own remaster, being released for Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch, while the Steam version was updated to the remaster. Their third game, Battleblock Theater was released in April 2013 on Xbox Live Arcade and distributed by Microsoft Studios (now Xbox Game Studios) while versions on the PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox One were distributed by Behemoth themselves. Their fourth game, Pit People, was released on March 2, 2018 on Steam and Xbox One. Their fifth and most recent game, Alien Hominid Invasion, an re-imagination of Alien Hominid, was released on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Steam on 2023, along with an remastered port of Alien Hominid HD for the same platforms.
Charity
Despite its limited funds, The Behemoth has been a regular giver to tragedy. Following the earthquake in Haiti, they promised to donate twice as much money as people spent on their games. Later, they promised that they would continue donating 200% until they reached $50,000. [1]