For a generation of Nintendo players, LJN is remembered before anything else by a rainbow.
The curved bands of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue appeared on cartridges and boxes for games tied to some of the largest names in movies, television, comic books, professional wrestling, and sports. Back to the Future, Jaws, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Karate Kid, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the World Wrestling Federation, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Terminator all passed through the LJN catalog in one form or another.
That collection of licenses eventually gave LJN one of the most recognizable identities among third-party publishers of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It also gave the company a reputation that followed it long after the rainbow logo disappeared.
Yet the popular version of the LJN story often begins much too late.
LJN was not created as a video game company, and for much of its existence video games were only one part of a much larger licensing business. Long before Nintendo cartridges carried its logo, LJN was selling toys connected to movies, television programs, professional wrestlers, musicians, and animated characters. Its success drew the attention of one of Hollywood’s largest entertainment corporations. Its failures helped persuade that corporation to leave the toy business. Its relationship with Nintendo later made it attractive to another growing video game publisher.
Seen in that larger history, LJN becomes more than the company attached to a collection of notoriously difficult licensed games. It becomes a case study in how toys, Hollywood licensing, television, professional wrestling, and video games were beginning to merge into a single entertainment business during the 1980s.
Jack Friedman and the Beginning of LJN
The history of LJN is closely tied to Jack Friedman, one of the more important figures connecting the American toy and video game industries.
Friedman began his career during the 1960s working as a sales representative for toy businessman Norman J. Lewis. With financial backing from Lewis, Friedman founded LJN in 1970. Later corporate biographies filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission likewise describe Friedman as president and chief operating officer of LJN Toys beginning in 1970. Some corporate genealogies trace the operation farther backward through Lewis Toys, Inc., but 1970 is the most defensible date for the creation of LJN itself.
That distinction matters because LJN’s earliest identity had almost nothing to do with video games. It was a toy company operating in an industry increasingly built around recognizable entertainment properties.
Friedman proved particularly adept at licensing.
Rather than depending entirely on characters created inside the company, LJN could attach toys to movies, television programs, celebrities, and other properties that already had an audience. It was a strategy Friedman would carry into later ventures, and it became the basic business logic behind many of LJN’s most famous products.
One of the company’s biggest breakthroughs came through E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Friedman’s later obituary recalled that his New York license plate once read “Thanx ET,” an acknowledgment of how important merchandise connected to the film had been to his career. LJN also produced celebrity merchandise such as Michael Jackson dolls and continued searching for entertainment properties that could move from a screen, stage, or arena onto toy-store shelves.
By the first half of the 1980s, licensing was not a side business for LJN. It was becoming the company’s identity.
Wrestling Superstars, Voltron, and the Licensed Toy Business
One of LJN’s most historically important deals came from professional wrestling.
In July 1984, Titan Sports, the company operating the World Wrestling Federation, entered into a licensing agreement allowing LJN Toys to manufacture figures using the images of WWF wrestlers. That agreement later appeared in federal litigation involving Jesse “The Body” Ventura, providing unusually strong primary documentation for the origins of the relationship.
The resulting Wrestling Superstars figures became memorable pieces of 1980s wrestling merchandise. Hulk Hogan, André the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Junkyard Dog, Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, and other wrestlers were transformed into large rubber figures that helped extend the WWF beyond television broadcasts and live arenas.
LJN was participating in something bigger than a toy craze. Professional wrestling was becoming a merchandising business, and the company was there during the WWF’s rapid national expansion.
Other licenses reinforced the same strategy. LJN marketed Voltron products and became associated with ThunderCats, another property built around the growing relationship between syndicated television animation and toy sales. Contemporary coverage in 1985 described LJN’s Wrestling Superstars as among the nation’s bestselling toys and quoted company executives discussing the play strategy behind its Voltron line.
By this point, LJN had become exactly the sort of company that a major entertainment corporation might want to own.
MCA Buys LJN
On March 26, 1985, entertainment giant MCA announced an agreement to acquire a controlling interest in LJN.
The initial transaction called for MCA to acquire approximately 63 percent of the toy company through a stock exchange valued at as much as $39.8 million, followed by an offer for the remaining shares. Contemporary reporting estimated that acquiring the entire company could value the transaction at about $65 million.
LJN was already a substantial business. The company had reported sales of $77.8 million for 1984 and earnings of $6.7 million. Its licensing portfolio included properties connected to MCA itself, such as E.T., Dune, Knight Rider, and The A-Team, while products based on Voltron and ThunderCats offered additional growth.
For MCA, the logic was clear. A Hollywood company that produced and controlled entertainment properties could capture more of the value surrounding those properties if it also participated in the merchandise business.
The acquisition moved quickly. By August 1985, MCA reported that its exchange offer had increased its ownership to approximately 97 percent of LJN, with plans for the toy maker to become a wholly owned subsidiary.
On paper, the combination made considerable sense. MCA supplied access to entertainment properties, while LJN understood how to turn recognizable names into merchandise.
The arrangement would prove far more complicated in practice.
LJN Moves Toward Electronic Entertainment
The years after the MCA acquisition coincided with dramatic changes in children’s entertainment.
The American home video game market, which had collapsed earlier in the decade, was being rebuilt around the Nintendo Entertainment System. Electronic toys were becoming more sophisticated. At the same time, companies were experimenting with ways to extend traditional toy concepts onto the television screen.
LJN participated in that experimentation before its video game publishing operation became famous.
One example was Video Art, an electronic drawing system that allowed children to create pictures on a television. A patent filed in October 1986 and issued in November 1988 described a system using one joystick for drawing and another for coloring on a conventional television display. LJN Toys was listed as the assignee.
Trademark filings from the period likewise show how quickly the company was expanding into electronic and technology-oriented products. LJN filed marks connected to Video Art, Laser Tanks, Gotcha, and its Entertech division during 1987.
The company was no longer simply making molded figures based on famous characters. It was trying to operate in the increasingly blurred territory between toys, electronics, television, and interactive entertainment.
That made Nintendo a natural next step.
The Rainbow Logo Comes to Nintendo
By 1987, LJN was an authorized Nintendo licensee.
Nintendo’s own Official Nintendo Player’s Guide from that year listed LJN Toys Ltd. among companies producing software for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Games associated with the company included Jaws, The Karate Kid, Gotcha! The Sport!, T&C Surf Designs, and Major League Baseball.
This was the beginning of the LJN most video game players remember.
The company’s established business model translated easily into the cartridge market. LJN already understood licensing. It already had relationships throughout entertainment. Nintendo had created an enormous new market in which familiar characters could be sold again as interactive products.
There was, however, an important difference between LJN’s role and the way its history is sometimes remembered.
LJN was primarily the publisher.
The actual development of its games was frequently contracted to outside studios. Specialist research into surviving credits connects LJN releases to developers including Atlus, Westone, Beam Software, Rare, Software Creations, Sculptured Software, and others. The Karate Kid, Friday the 13th, and Major League Baseball are associated with Atlus development work. Beam Software developed Back to the Future. Rare worked on games including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the released version of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Beetlejuice, and several wrestling titles.
That outsourcing model explains why games carrying exactly the same rainbow logo could differ so greatly from one another. The logo represented the publisher and license holder, not necessarily a single internal development team designing every game according to one philosophy.
Selling Hollywood on a Cartridge
Surviving LJN trade material provides one of the clearest windows into how the company thought about video games.
The Video Game History Foundation preserves LJN “Enteractive Video Games” sales kits produced for the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1988 and the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1989. These were company-produced promotional materials intended to help sell LJN’s growing game lineup to the trade.
Their existence is important because they place LJN firmly inside the professional video game publishing business rather than treating games as a brief sideline.
The name “Enteractive” itself captured the strategy. LJN was taking entertainment brands and pushing them into interactive media.
Movie licenses were an obvious fit. Jaws transformed Universal’s famous shark into a Nintendo game. The Karate Kid drew upon the successful film series. Back to the Future carried one of the decade’s most valuable movie names. Horror films became especially visible through Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Sports and lifestyle properties were just as important. LJN published Major League Baseball, NFL, and T&C Surf Designs. Professional wrestling, already proven in the company’s toy business, became a natural video game category.
The strategy was remarkably consistent with the LJN of the early 1980s. The technology had changed, but the underlying question remained the same: which name would a customer recognize when looking at the shelf?
The Strange Case of A Nightmare on Elm Street
The surviving CES material also reveals something easily lost when video game history is reconstructed only from finished cartridges.
Games changed during development.
LJN’s Winter CES material from January 1989 promoted an A Nightmare on Elm Street project that differed substantially from the game eventually released for the NES. The surviving publicity material therefore captures an abandoned stage in the history of the project rather than simply advertising the finished Rare-developed game familiar to collectors today.
That is one reason contemporary catalogs, advertisements, trade-show folders, and magazines are so valuable when studying companies like LJN. They preserve planned games, provisional concepts, marketing language, and release schedules that later databases cannot always reconstruct.
LJN’s history was not merely the history of the cartridges that reached stores. It also included projects that changed direction or never survived long enough to become finished products.
Gotcha and the Crisis in LJN’s Toy Business
While LJN was expanding into Nintendo software, its traditional toy business was moving into dangerous territory.
The company’s Entertech division marketed realistic toy weapons, including the Gotcha line of marking guns. A 1987 advertisement identified Entertech directly as a division of LJN Toys and presented Gotcha as a competitive sport using washable color projectiles.
The products soon became controversial.
Consumer groups criticized Gotcha and other realistic toy weapons, while law-enforcement and public-safety concerns surrounding replica guns were becoming increasingly visible nationally. In November 1987, United Press International reported criticism of Gotcha from the Consumer Affairs Committee of Americans for Democratic Action, including concern about the potential for injury.
For MCA, the consequences went beyond bad publicity.
The parent company eventually took a $35 million charge connected to LJN’s inventory of Gotcha guns. Contemporary reporting later described the episode as a major blow to MCA’s profits and one from which LJN’s toy operation never fully recovered.
The irony is striking. At almost the same moment that the rainbow logo was becoming familiar to Nintendo owners, the larger company behind that logo was facing a serious crisis in the business that had originally created it.
MCA Decides to Get Out
By January 1990, MCA had decided to sell LJN.
The Los Angeles Times reported that MCA planned to take a $30 million charge against 1989 earnings connected with the sale, along with another write-off for discontinued operations. The decision reflected years of frustration with the toy subsidiary and the financial consequences of the Gotcha episode.
Two months later, a buyer emerged.
Acclaim Entertainment agreed in March 1990 to acquire LJN’s United States operations, with the exception of the American Publishing puzzles business. Acclaim was already deeply involved with Nintendo software, but the most revealing part of the transaction was not simply that it was purchasing another game publisher.
The deal gave Acclaim the right to release five additional Nintendo Entertainment System titles each year under the LJN label.
That detail helps explain why LJN remained useful even after the toy company that created the name was being dismantled.
Under Nintendo’s tightly controlled licensing environment, a recognized publishing label represented more than branding. It represented additional access to the market. Acclaim could use LJN’s existing relationship with Nintendo to expand the number of games it could place on the NES.
The rainbow logo had become an asset in its own right.
LJN Under Acclaim
The sale changed what LJN was.
The old toy company receded while the name continued as a video game publishing label. This is the period when the LJN identity became most permanently linked with gaming.
The catalog expanded beyond the NES as the industry moved into Game Boy, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and other platforms. Wrestling remained important. So did licensed movies and comic-book characters.
Games carrying the LJN name included WWF WrestleMania Challenge, WWF Superstars, WWF Super WrestleMania, WWF Royal Rumble, and WWF Raw. The company also became associated with properties such as Alien 3, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Incredible Crash Dummies, and Maximum Carnage. Later releases under the label reached well beyond the Nintendo system on which LJN had built its video game reputation.
This period further complicates the popular idea that LJN represented one development team producing one recognizable kind of game.
Acclaim was using a publishing label attached to licensed properties that were being developed by numerous outside studios. Quality, design, technology, and even platform could vary considerably from one project to the next.
The common denominator was the brand on the box.
Why LJN Earned Its Reputation
None of this means that LJN’s reputation among players appeared from nowhere.
Several of its most famous NES releases became known for confusing objectives, punishing difficulty, repetitive design, or mechanics that did not live up to the enormous licenses printed on their boxes. A child who selected a game because Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, the X-Men, or Marty McFly appeared on the package could easily expect an experience more closely resembling the movie or comic that inspired it.
The limitations of the NES made such adaptations difficult in the first place. Development schedules, licensing demands, cartridge costs, and the expectations placed on outside studios added further pressure.
Yet LJN had chosen a strategy in which the license often did much of the selling.
That made disappointment especially memorable.
A generic game could be forgotten. A disappointing Back to the Future game was attached to Back to the Future forever.
Over time, those individual disappointments accumulated beneath the same rainbow logo. Later internet culture magnified the association, and LJN became shorthand for a particular kind of licensed video game.
That reputation is part of video game history, but it should not replace the history.
The Toy Company Did Not Simply Vanish Overnight
The end of LJN is also more complicated than a single date suggests.
The company had already been transformed by the 1990 Acclaim acquisition. During the following years, LJN increasingly functioned as a publishing label rather than the independent toy business created by Jack Friedman two decades earlier.
Its visible presence declined during the mid-1990s as Acclaim consolidated its publishing operations.
That is often treated as the end of LJN, and from the perspective of players looking for the rainbow logo on store shelves, it largely was.
Legally, however, the name had a longer afterlife.
An Acclaim financing agreement dated August 4, 2004 still identified LJN Toys, Ltd. as one of several borrowers alongside Acclaim Entertainment and related corporations.
This does not mean LJN was still operating as the toy and video game company consumers remembered. It does show why saying that the corporation simply “ceased to exist” in the mid-1990s can be misleading.
The brand, the operating business, and the legal corporate entity did not necessarily disappear at the same moment.
Jack Friedman’s Influence Beyond LJN
Jack Friedman’s departure did not end his influence on video games or toys.
After leaving LJN in the late 1980s, Friedman became associated with THQ, another company that would build much of its early business around licensed entertainment software. He later co-founded JAKKS Pacific, returning prominently to the toy business and once again working with major entertainment licenses.
SEC filings for JAKKS described Friedman as president and chief operating officer of LJN from 1970 until the late 1980s before tracing his later leadership roles at THQ and JAKKS.
Seen across those companies, the continuity is difficult to miss.
Friedman’s career repeatedly returned to the same commercial idea that had powered LJN: familiar entertainment properties could move between media. A movie could become a toy. A wrestler could become an action figure. A cartoon could become a product line. A licensed character could become a video game.
Modern entertainment merchandising operates on exactly that principle.
Remembering LJN Beyond the Rainbow
The easiest version of LJN’s history is the one in which a rainbow appears on a bad Nintendo game.
The real history is considerably more interesting.
LJN began as a toy company during the rise of licensed entertainment merchandise. It attached itself to properties ranging from E.T. and Voltron to the World Wrestling Federation and ThunderCats. That success attracted MCA at a time when major entertainment corporations were trying to control more of the merchandise surrounding their movies and television programs.
Then the market changed.
Electronic toys and the revival of home video games opened a new field. LJN entered Nintendo publishing with the same licensing instincts it had used in the toy aisle, relying heavily on outside developers while placing famous names on cartridges beneath its rainbow logo.
At the same time, problems in its traditional toy business weakened the company. MCA eventually decided to sell, and Acclaim recognized that LJN still possessed something valuable: a known brand, a library of entertainment relationships, and additional access to Nintendo publishing.
The toy company became a video game label, and the video game label became a memory.
Today, collectors and players may still debate Friday the 13th, Back to the Future, Jaws, X-Men, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the dozens of other games connected to LJN. Some defend titles that have been dismissed too easily. Others consider the company’s reputation entirely deserved.
Both arguments are part of the legacy.
What the historical record makes clear is that LJN cannot be understood through game reviews alone. Its story runs through toy licensing, Hollywood conglomerates, professional wrestling, electronic toys, Nintendo’s licensing system, outsourced development, and the consolidation of the American video game industry.
The rainbow logo was not the beginning of LJN.
It was the surviving symbol of a much larger company whose history helps explain how the worlds of toys, television, film, sports, and video games became permanently connected.
Sources & Further Reading
LJN Toys Ltd. “Enteractive Video Games.” Sales and publicity kit prepared for the Summer Consumer Electronics Show, June 4–7, 1988. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/86c3cb5f-15bb-4523-9cdf-956a75a8b3b4
LJN Toys Ltd. “Enteractive Video Games.” Sales kit prepared for the Winter Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1989. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/17454
Video Game History Foundation. “Game Publisher Publicity Kits Collection.” Game History Library. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/resources/237
Nintendo of America. The Official Nintendo Player’s Guide. Redmond, WA: Nintendo of America, 1987. https://melaniff.com/melaniff/nintendo_files/The_Official_Nintendo_Players_Guide_1987.pdf
Nintendo of America. Nintendo Power, no. 2. September–October 1988. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/digital_objects/12190
Nintendo of America. Nintendo Power, no. 4. January–February 1989. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/ce491afb-5d20-4f00-9ac3-3102bcf20952
Nintendo of America. Nintendo Power, no. 8. September–October 1989. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/digital_objects/12196
Video Game History Foundation. “Nintendo Power Archive.” Game History Library. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/resources/8/collection_organization
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC News Digest. September 13, 1984. Washington, DC: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/news/digest/1984/dig091384.pdf
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC News Digest. April 10, 1985. Washington, DC: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/news/digest/1985/dig041085.pdf
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Federal Trade Commission. “Premerger Notification.” Federal Register, May 14, 1985. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1985-05-14/pdf/FR-1985-05-14.pdf
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC News Digest. May 22, 1990. Washington, DC: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/news/digest/1990/dig052290.pdf
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. “LJN Sling ’Em-Fling ’Em Wrestling Ring Toy Recalled.” November 4, 1991. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/1991/ljn-sling-em-fling-em-wrestling-ring-toy-recalled
Fassi v. LJN Toys, Ltd., 753 F. Supp. 486 (S.D.N.Y. 1990). https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/753/486/1460142/
Lugo v. LJN Toys, Ltd., 75 N.Y.2d 850 (N.Y. 1990). https://www.leagle.com/decision/199092575ny2d8504784
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L.J.N. Toys Ltd. “LJN.” U.S. Trademark Application Serial No. 73209767. Filed April 2, 1979. https://uspto.report/TM/73209767
LJN Toys Ltd. “VIDEO ART.” U.S. Trademark Application Serial No. 73670408. 1987. https://uspto.report/TM/73670408
Gussin, Edward L. “Video Art Electronic System.” U.S. Patent No. 4,782,335. Filed October 30, 1986; issued November 1, 1988. Assignee: LJN Toys Ltd. https://patents.justia.com/patents-by-us-classification/273/148B?page=5
LJN Toys Ltd. “Toy Vehicle.” U.S. Design Patent D275874. United States Patent and Trademark Office. https://patents.justia.com/patent/D275874
Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. Annual and corporate filings. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/804888/000119312504113086/d10k.htm
Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. “Credit Extension Agreement.” August 4, 2004. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/804888/000119312504132497/dex1050.htm
JAKKS Pacific, Inc. Proxy Statement. 2003. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1009829/000095014803001850/v91749def14a.htm
JAKKS Pacific, Inc. Form 10-K. 2004. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1009829/000095014804000601/v94867e10vk.htm
Harris, Kathryn. “MCA Agrees to Acquire L.J.N. Toys: Entertainment Firm to Exchange Up to $39.8 Million in Stock.” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1985. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-03-27-fi-20221-story.html
“Second-Quarter Earnings Off 38% at MCA.” Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1985. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-07-fi-3905-story.html
“MCA to Sell LJN Toys Unit After Losses.” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-01-23-fi-524-story.html
“MCA Agrees to Sell Ailing Toy Unit.” Los Angeles Times, March 13, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-13-fi-130-story.html
“Terms Announced in MCA-LJN Transaction.” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-01-fi-1446-story.html
“Company News: MCA Taking Loss in Sale of Toy Unit.” New York Times, January 23, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/23/business/company-news-mca-taking-loss-in-sale-of-toy-unit.html
“MCA in Pact with Acclaim.” New York Times, March 13, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/13/business/mca-in-pact-with-acclaim.html
“Advertising: A Split at LJN Toys.” New York Times, September 4, 1987. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/04/business/advertising-a-split-at-ljn-toys.html
“Patents: Device Converts TV Set into a Coloring Book.” New York Times, November 5, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/05/business/patents-device-converts-tv-set-into-a-coloring-book.html
“After 3 Deaths, Realistic Toys Are Under Fire.” New York Times, June 16, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/16/garden/after-3-deaths-realistic-toys-are-under-fire.html
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United Press International. “Holiday Season Expected to Aid Troubled Toy Industry.” November 10, 1987. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/11/10/Holiday-season-expected-to-aid-troubled-toy-industry/1102563518800/
United Press International. “Boy Sues Nintendo over Baseball Game.” January 31, 1990. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/01/31/Boy-sues-Nintendo-over-baseball-game/6474633762000/
Computer Entertainer. December 1987. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Computer_Entertainer_6-9.pdf
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LJN Toys Ltd. 1988 Toy Fair Catalog. 1988. Digitized by Wheeljack’s Lab. https://wheeljackslab.com/toy-fair-catalogs/ljn/1988
LJN Toys Ltd./Entertech. “Gotcha!” Advertisement. National Lampoon, 1987. https://www.luckyfrogfarms.com/cook/NL/1980%27s/1987/1987_10.pdf
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McLellan, Dennis. “Jack Friedman Dies at 70; Toy Maker Founded Several Companies.” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2010. https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-jack-friedman-20100506-story.html
“THQ’s Video-Game Success Is No Accident.” Los Angeles Times, December 24, 1991. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-24-fi-936-story.html
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