Though developer Data East went out of business last year, its games may yet survive in the future. Japanese company G-Mode, one of the top developers and distributors of cellular phone games, today announced that it has bought the rights to the entire Data East back catalog. The deal includes more than 100 games developed by Data East over the past 20 years. Data East's best-known classic effort is Burger Time, but NES fans probably remember the name better in connection with Bad Dudes, Karnov, and other 8-bit side-scrollers. In its latter days, Data East had a cult puzzle hit with the Magical Drop series, but it was unable to keep up with the changing market, and officially declared bankruptcy in 2003. G-Mode obviously plans to exploit Data East's properties for its own mobile gaming projects, the first of which are to debut this summer, but it may license some titles to other developers for console and handheld development. For the few Magical Drop fans in attendance, we'll stay on the lookout for more news.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in 1UP.