Rainbow Arts was a German video game developer founded in 1984 in Gütersloh by Marc Ulrich which was later bought by Funsoft, and eventually absorbed by THQ in 1999.
It worked both as a developer and as a publisher, and was known by the own C64 and Amiga games. Rainbow Arts was at times one of the largest German and European companies in the field of computer games.
In the early 1990s most of the company's creative developers left to start their own development studios, such as Thomas Hertzler, who is now Managing Director of Blue-Byte, and Armin Gessert, who founded Spellbound Entertainment.


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Rainbow Arts was founded in 1984 by Thomas and Marc Alexander Ullrich Meiertoberens in Gütersloh; after the separation of the CEO of the company moved to Dusseldorf, as the company's shares were sold to the company Soft Gold, which in turn belonged to Rushware group. One of the early games of the company was Madness.

From the mid-1980s, Rainbow Arts had success with known titles such as the popular Turrican series, MadTV, Katakis or The Great Giana Sisters. Many known and partly also today active in the computer games industry figures such as Armin Gessert, Manfred Trenz, Thomas Hertzler, Chris Hülsbeck, Boris Schneider, Martin Gaksch, Teut Weidemann, Celal Kandemiroglu and Hans Ippisch worked at least temporarily for Rainbow Arts.

The demise of the company began in the early 1990s: The distribution did not make it, the title cover costs worldwide for sale while the development costs rose continuously. The name Rainbow Arts lost since notoriety. The parent company Softgold was again bought up in 1999 by the American game manufacturer THQ. The name Rainbow Arts was finally no longer be continued from 1999 onwards.

Trivia

The Rainbow Arts Software GmbH became famous among other things, one of the first processes to the question of whether there is a competition between a software house and a, operated by a student, bulletin board system similar name ("Rainbow BBS") so that sign legal claims are enforceable. This was confirmed by the District Court of Munich.

The Rainbow Arts Software GmbH has been represented in this process by the lawyer Günter Freiherr von Gravenreuth. The decision unsettled the mailbox scene considerably.