Born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, Emmanuel Viau obtained a scientific baccalaureate in 1978 and then studied medicine for two years before failing the competitive examination. During his military service, he bought himself a ZX80 which he learned to use while on guard duty at the armoury. At the end of his conscription, he did a programming course at Control Data before joining a cash management company.
At the same time, he created a number of small games and utilities and one day offered them to Direco Internationalimporter of Sinclair at the time. The latter seemed interested - on condition that he supplied around a hundred copies of the games. Emmanuel Viau quit his job and in 1983 founded ERE Informatiqueto 'edit' his own creations as well as those of other programmers who suggested them to Direco. This is how he met Philippe Ulrichwhose game Panic impressed him greatly.
Viau had him sign a contract before finding a graphic designer, Michel Rhoto produce the covers. Sales start to take off with the flight simulator Cobalt Interceptor (1984) on ZX81and the publisher was asked to release its games on other PCs. It will publish, among others Macadam Bumper (1985), Sram, Crafton and Xunk (1986), Eden Blues, Le Passager du Temps (1987) and Teenage Queen (1988).
But in 1988, the ailing company was bought by Infogrameswhich allows it to publish its games abroad, such as Captain Blood's Ark (1988) under the label Exxoswhich has become a huge success all over the world.
Philippe Ulrich disagreed with Infogrames' vision and left to found his own company. Cryo Interactive in 1989, while Emmanuel Viau created NovtechIts aim is to reissue classics at low prices in supermarkets. At the same time, it also publishes The Angel and the Demon (1993) on CD-i with his company Smart MoveHe is also interested in distributing games and demos on newsstands, and is setting up the French distributor for the publisher SoftDisk leading to the creation of the magazine Periodisk.
In 1995, he joined Coktel Vision/Sierra as European Development Director, before heading up its subsidiary MDO dedicated to the series Adi/Adibou. In 2000, Emmanuel Viau became Vice-Chairman of his distributor ICE Multimedia in Montreal.
The company went bankrupt in 2002, but he then co-founded with one of his colleagues Enzyme Testing Labsone of the world leaders in video game quality assurance, which it sold at the end of 2016 to Keywords Studios.
