Activision Publishing

Background

Activision Publishing was founded in October 1, 1979 by Atari programmers David Crane, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead. It was the world's first independent developer and distributor for video game consoles. Their first titles were games for Atari 2600 and was the first third-party developer for it. In 1988, their name was changed to "Mediagenic" when it began involvement on video game systems. However, in December 1992 after emerging from bankruptcy, it was officially renamed back to it's current name. In December 2007, it was announced that Activision was to be merged with Vivendi Games, the owner of Blizzard Entertainment, and the merge was completed on July 2008. Today, the company is currently a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard and is known for publishing and distributing the Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Skylanders and Vilgante 8 franchises.

1st Logo (1979-1991, 2002, 2006)

Logo: Copyright info for the game's year of release appears. It then moves upward, with the Activision logo (just the word "ACTIVISION" written in custom font with "V" horns expanded to the top and connected to the letter "T", and a rainbow attached to the back of the "A", respectively) appearing from below.

Variants:

On Activision Anthology, the logo is redone in good quality. Also, the rainbow appears from the left, and pulls the Activision logo on-screen from the right. The logo, now complete, then flashes. The variant is based on the animation of the logo used in Activision adverts from the 1980's. The music was used in the ads as well. Activision's motto from the era was "We put you in the game".
Some Atari 2600 games don't have the rainbow attached to the "A".
The rainbow's color is different on some Atari 2600 games.

FX/SFX: None. For the variant, the animation and the flash.

Music/Sounds: None. On the variant, a brief brass-synth rock ensemble plays.

Availability:

It is seen on some Amiga games from the company, as well as on the bottom of the screen when an Activision game for Atari 2600 is inserted and running. It also reappears when the game ends. Both A Collection of Activision Classic Games on PlayStation and Activision Anthology on PlayStation 2 keep the logos intact on all games emulated on the discs.
The variation is only seen on the PlayStation 2 version of Activision Anthology. Don't expect the variation to appear on Activision Hits Remixed for PSP or Activision Anthology for iOS, as the former used the 5th logo instead and the latter did not use the variant.

Editor's Note: None.

2nd Logo (Still variants) (1984-)

Logo: We see the Activision logo in white, and this time the rainbow is gone.

Variants: There are a lot of variants of this logo.

HyperBlade: The logo is set on a blue and gray pattern.
GoldenEye 007 (DS): Black logo with golden borders.
Shark Tale (GBA): The logo is green graffiti.
Shrek 2 (GBA): The logo is made of green rocks in a swamp.
Madagascar (GBA): The background shows a crack on the yellow surface. Marty is on the top left if you look closely.
Ghostbusters II (1989): blue logo with thin red outline, "Presents" appears below.
Zork Nemesis (PC): Still white logo with "presents" below.
Shanghai 2: Dragon's Eye (1990): Colored in gradient blue and brown (a reflection of sky and ground).
MechWarrior (SNES): blue background with scattered white fragments.
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (1995): The brown logo stands in animated water and jungle.
X-Kaliber 2097 (SNES): Totally blue background.
Transformers: War for Cybertron (NDS): The starfield is present and there are blue borders.
On the trailer for Quake 4, the logo has a crystallized orange view.
Shrek Super Slam (GBA): White logo on a black background.

Trivia: The still version comes untamed from the very early years of existence.

FX/SFX: Depending on the variant.

Music/Sounds: None or the opening theme of the game.

Availability: Seen on the games mentioned above on their respected platforms using their respected variants.

Editor's Note: None.

3rd Logo (1995-1997)

Nickname: "The Water Logo"

Logo: The Activision logo is made out of stone (and in perspective), which is posed against a cloud background and it hangs above the water surface with its reflection in it, which is waving.

FX/SFX: The water reflection waving.

Music/Sounds: The sound of the water waves. Sometimes, the game's background music is heard.

Availability: Rare. Appears on Activision's earlier Saturn and PlayStation games such as Blast Chamber, Grand Tour Racing '98 and Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. It can be also seen on PC games as well, such as the PC versions of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure and Earthworm Jim: Special Edition.

Editor's Note: None.

4th Logo (1997-2001, 2010)

Nickname: "The Explosive Logo"

Logo: We start out with a black screen. After a few seconds, a piece of the screen breaks out, revealing a beam of light. More pieces break out, and more light emits through the holes. The light begins to change color as more pieces are breaking out. As all the pieces fly off-screen, the Activision logo is shown. It glows purple-blue for a few seconds, and then vanishes via a TV power off-like effect by zooming in blurring, and then finally disappears.

Variants:

There is a later and more common variant where the animation is enhanced, and the light just glows blue, and the pieces are blown out faster than usual, and the effect towards the end is different. On some games, however, the logo is sped up a little.
On Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force and Star Trek: Invasion, the logo hangs in space and it's plain white and doesn't glow. Then, the Starship Enterprise flies from the left side of the screen and blows the logo to ashes.
On games published by Activision Value, the word "Value" in cursive appears on the bottom of the Activision logo.
On Heavy Gear II, the logo fades out instead of disappearing.
A still version exists. It can be on either a black or white background.

FX/SFX: The stone pieces being broken out, the light, and the power-off effect.

Music/Sounds: The prototype variation is as follows: At the beginning, there is a choir when the screen is black, then an explosion sounds when the stone pieces are breaking out, accompanied by a THX-like ascending synth note when the logo is revealed. Then, an electric power-off sound when the logo disappears. On the later variant, the music and sounds were enhanced.

Music/Sounds Variant: On the PlayStation version of Spider-Man (the 2000 game of the same name), the last second of the audio is cut off.

Availability: Common.

Appears on PlayStation, Dreamcast and PC games from the era such as Dark Reign 2, Vilgante 8 and its sequel, Vilgante 8: 2nd Offense, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and its sequel, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (PlayStation and Dreamcast versions only), X-Men: Mutant Academy, the PlayStation and Dreamcast versions of both Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Toy Story Racer, BattleZone (the 1998 PC game based on the 1980 arcade game of the same name), Asteroids (the 1998 remake of the 1979 arcade game), A Collection of Activsion Classic Games for the Atari 2600 and its sister game, A Collection of Classic Games for the Mattel Intellevision, Spider-Man (the 2000 game; excluding it's PC version, which has the logo below), Heavy Gear and its sequel, Heavy Gear II. It can also be seen on Orphen: Scion of Sorcery and Bloody Roar 3, which are the only PlayStation 2 games to use this logo.
This logo is surprisingly kept on the iOS version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, but the first 2 seconds of this logo are cut off. As of 2014 however, due to incompatibility with iOS versions past 7 on video playback, the game was removed from the App Store.
The still version appears on games by this company, like some of the aforementioned games for Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color (not counting the N64 version of THPS2 released in 2001, it used the Activision O2 brand instead). The logo described above is rare, as it appears mostly on some games for the PC and PlayStation from 1997-1998 like Nightmare Creatures, Dark Reign: The Future of War and Zork: Grand Inquisitor.
The Star Trek variant appears on Star Trek titles published by the company like Star Trek: Invasion and Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force.
The Activision Value variant is seen on low priced PC games such as the PC version of The House of the Dead 2 and Boards and Blades 2.

Editor's Note: None.

5th Logo (August 26, 2001-)

Nickname: "The Spinning Letters"

Logo: On a black background with many different symbols sliding in from many areas, we see the "V" swooping in from the right getting to the center. Then, the letters "A", "C", "T", three "I"'s, "S" "O" and "N" appear from different areas spinning quickly around the "V". Then, all the letters quickly connect into the word "ACTIVISION", in the similar font as the past logos as the background disappears and the very dark light rays appear. The logo quickly zooms into us, shaking for a brief moment and the rays dye out. The logo turns two-dimensional and fades out after a couple of seconds.

Variants:

Starting with Call of Duty 2 in 2005, there is an elaborate HD version of the logo, which doesn't have the blur and the background is a bit darker. Also, there is a widescreen version of it depending on the selected resolution.
There is a still version, as well as a color inverted version.
On some games, such as Shrek 2, the PlayStation 2 version of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 3: The Night of the Quinkan, the logo is horizontally squished.
Sometimes, and on later revisions, the logo cuts to black early at the end.
On DJ Hero 2, the logo halts after it zooms in, but doesn't turn two-dimensional. It then begins to zoom and spin back and forth as the colors began to offset, and rewinds to the beginning, as if you're scratching a record on a turntable. Then the logo plays again, but with the FreeStyleGames logo instead.
On Prototype, the logo, with a red outline, glitches on an interlaced red background that flickers, and cuts away, followed by the Radical Entertainment logo.
The logo is also been rendered in 60 frames per second in some games.
On Call of Duty: World At War, it goes after the Treyarch logo, and is black & white with a projector effect. When the logo ends, it cuts out like a projector.
On Call of Duty: Black Ops, the logo also comes after Treyarch, but this time has red numbers, and 2 Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters flying in the distance before it fades to white.
On Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the logo appears in the same green line graphic as Infinity Ward's logo and dissolves out.
On Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the logo is on a beige background with some war footage, including a T-72 tank driving, soldiers marching, a man's face burning, Ronald Reagan giving a speech, and a Boeing AH-64 Apache flying towards us, before coming to the logo, with some text above reading "THE CALM HAS ENDED. THEY ARE BEGINNING TO RETURN." before it cuts to black.
On Call of Duty: Ghosts, the logo forms from mauve shards of glass, and folds into the Infinity Ward logo.
On Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the logo, in golden, wipes in on a brown background with particles flying everywhere.
On Call of Duty: Black Ops III, the logo forms after the Treyarch logo, where it consists of black buildings, which form the logo.
On Call of Duty: WWII, the logo fades in on a black background with some fog and barely visible film scratches while zooming in slightly. The Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software logos follow in the same manner
On Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, the logo forms in a computer graphic-like fashion.
On Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, the logo is superimposed on some archive footage, with "PRESENTS" below it. On later updates, the logo is positioned over gameplay.
On Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), the logo, in blue with a horizontal line running across it and interlacing, gradually reveals itself.
On Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the logo is on a glass wall with a map of the world, specifically Hainan in China.
On Call of Duty: Vanguard, the logo is similar to the the WWII variant, but is sepia-toned, doesn't zoom in and is more three-dimensional.

FX/SFX: The flying letters spinning and forming the logo.

Music/Sounds: Many swirling and whooshing sounds as the letters spin, followed by a deep bang when the logo zooms in quickly.

Music/Sounds Variants:

On some games like the PlayStation 2 version of Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions and Shrek: Smash & Crash Racing, the sounds are played at a higher pitch.
On Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and its Xbox port Return From Darkness, the sounds are heavily compressed.
Starting in 2009 with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, the whooshing sounds are different, though the bang remains the same. However, some games, like Transformers: Devastation and Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, have the original sounds.
DJ Hero 2: TBA
On Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy, Dr. Neo Cortex (voiced by Lex Lang) announces, "Activision presents...a smashing blast from the past!".
On Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, The speech is the same, but announced by another narrator.

Availability: Very common, and current. It appeared on many games published by the company since Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro. Notable examples of where you can find it on include Madagascar, the Call of Duty series prior to World at War, the Spider-Man series, as well as many other games including the Tony Hawk series starting with Tony Hawk's Underground, the True Crime series, Gun, and The Movies, among others. The HD version appears on later games for Xbox 360, PS3, PC, among others starting with Call of Duty 2. Don't expect to find this logo on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, as the logo is strangely not seen. This is still used, despite being mostly replaced by its custom variants on newer titles (especially the Call of Duty ones), as it recently appeared on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, as well as Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.

Editor's Note: None.

6th Logo (Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock variant) (September 24, 2010)

Logo: We see the Activision logo in the same style as the past logos standing on a molten rock, as lava flows through the rock and splatters all around. Other logos appear in the same way.

FX/SFX: The lava flowing through the molten rock and splattering below.

Music/Sounds: A rock-like tune along with sounds of lava bubbling and splattering.

Availability: Only seen on Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.

Editor's Note: None.