The release was considered a landmark science fiction game and led to the 1992 sequel Star Control II, which greatly expanded the series' story and scale.

This led to a spinoff series with several successful games, generating a billion dollars in revenue for Activision in the first 15 months and winning several awards.

[6] Meanwhile, Reiche had started his career working for Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR before developing PC games for Free Fall Associates.

[6] At this point, Reiche needed a programmer and Ford was seeking a designer/artist, so their mutual friends set up a board game night to introduce them.

[5] Archon's strategic elements were adapted for Star Control into a space setting, with one-on-one ship combat inspired by the classic 1962 game Spacewar!.

[11] During production, Reiche and Ford spent time working on their collaborative process, and this was partly why the game was limited in scope compared to its sequel.

[5] As the pair had retained the rights to their characters and stories from the first two games,[21] they licensed their content to Accolade so that the publisher could produce Star Control 3 without their involvement.

[54] Aiming to take advantage of Crystal Dynamics's Hollywood connections and the increased storage size of CD-ROMs for the video scenes, they hired a cast of professional actors including Martin Short and Kirk Cameron.

[5] Bandai ultimately had them produce Majokko Daisakusen: Little Witching Mischiefs, a game based on magical girl characters from Japanese anime created in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

[5] As the project dragged on, the studio continued to receive bug reports in Japanese until they simply unplugged their fax machine, thus ending development.

[6] After operating as a partnership for more than a decade,[2][3] Reiche, Ford, and Terry Falls incorporated Toys for Bob in 2002, and announced that they were seeking a new publisher after parting ways with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Interactive.

[61][62] Soon after re-establishing their studio as an independent company, Reiche and Ford released the source code for the 3DO version of Star Control II as open-source software under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) and enlisted the fan community to port it to modern operating systems.

[63] The result was the 2002 open source game The Ur-Quan Masters, released under a new title since the Star Control trademark was owned by Atari, who had acquired Accolade.

[64] An intern at Toys for Bob began porting the game to various modern operating systems, and the fan community continued the project with further support and modifications.

[6] As the industry found a thriving market for licensed game adaptations, Activision asked Toys for Bob to work on Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure,[4] which combined the publisher's game engine from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 with the studio's experience working on Disney properties.

[4] Their growing relationship with the publisher led them to be acquired in 2005: the studio became a wholly owned subsidiary under Activision, and the management team and employees signed long-term contracts under the new corporate structure.

[71] The company saw the potential to adapt these toys and character designs into a game, with technical engineer Robert Leyland applying his hobby in building electronics.

[4][74] Activision CEO Bobby Kotick responded well to the idea and gave them an additional year of development to better refine the gameplay, technology, and manufacturing process.

[78] Multiple publications have credited Skylanders with creating the toys-to-life genre, attracting competitors such as Nintendo, Disney, and the Lego Group to the multi-billion-dollar market sector.

[85][86][87] However, slower sales and increased competition suggested that toys-to-life games might have hit their peak, and Activision decided to discontinue the Skylanders series.

[95] Founders Reiche and Ford left Toys for Bob at the end of 2020 to create an independent studio and commence development on a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters.

[1] In April 2021, it was announced that Toys for Bob would be working on Call of Duty: Warzone as a support studio alongside Raven Software, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch.

[110][111] Kotick also expressed his long-term desire to revive the Skylanders series, believing this was now possible thanks to Microsoft's hardware manufacturing and supply chain.

[89][112] As part of 1,900 job cuts instituted by Microsoft in January 2024, 89 people were laid off from Toys for Bob and the studio's offices in Novato were closed down.