Rockstar North

Rockstar North Ltd

Type	Subsidiary of Rockstar Games
Industry	Interactive entertainment Computer and video games
Predecessor(s)	DMA Design
Founded	1988 (as DMA Design) 2002 (as Rockstar North)
Headquarters	Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Key people	Leslie Benzies, Dan Houser, Sam Houser, Aaron Garbut, Obbe Vermeij, Adam Fowler, Allan Walker, Craig Filshie, Paul Kurowski, Craig Connor
Products	Grand Theft Auto series (1997 - present) Lemmings series (1991 - 1994) Body Harvest (1998) Manhunt (2003) Agent (TBA)
Owner(s)	Take-Two Interactive
Parent	Rockstar Games
Website	www.rockstarnorth.com

Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design Ltd) is a British video game developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, best known for creating the Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings franchises in its earlier guise as DMA.

Since early 2002 the company has been a part of the multinational company Rockstar Games, owned by Take-Two Interactive. It is the primary developer of the Grand Theft Auto series, including Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which are three of the best-selling games on sixth-generation consoles, in addition to the best-selling Grand Theft Auto IV in the current generation of consoles.

On 25 October 2011, Rockstar North announced their latest Grand Theft Auto game in the franchise, titled Grand Theft Auto V.

History

Rockstar North office building as seen from Calton Hill in central Edinburgh

Late 1980s

DMA Design was founded in 1988 by David Jones, Russell Kay, Steve Hammond and Mike Dailly in Dundee, Scotland. The name DMA was taken from the Amiga programming manuals (where it stood for Direct Memory Access) and the initials were later 'retrofitted' so that they briefly stood for Direct Mind Access (DMA was also jokingly referred to as "Doesn't Mean Anything" by a company founder). In 1988 DMA signed with UK label Psygnosis and developed Menace and Blood Money – side-scrolling space shooters which gained attention from gamers and critics for both their high-quality presentation and difficulty. As with all the company's early games, Menace and Blood Money debuted on the Amiga, one of the leading platforms for video games in Europe between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. A Commodore 64 port was published immediately after, later followed by DOS and Atari ST versions.

Early 1990s

DMA's major breakthrough came with 1990's Lemmings, a dynamic puzzle game that sold over 20 million copies on 21 different systems. It debuted on the Amiga and it was available on other major platforms like the NES and Macintosh, and more obscure formats such as the FM Towns and the CD-i. Much of DMA's time over the next few years was devoted to Lemmings follow-ups (Oh No! More Lemmings, Lemmings 2: The Tribes, All New World of Lemmings, and two Christmas-themed Holiday Lemmings special editions). They also released two original titles: 1993's Walker (a side-scrolling mech shooter) and 1994's Hired Guns (a first-person tactical shooter game with a four-way split screen). Other Lemmings sequels and spinoffs, such as Lemmings Paintball and Lemmings 3D, have appeared over the years, but these were produced without DMA.

Mid 1990s

1994's Uniracers, a 2D platform racer featuring riderless unicycles was the company's first game to debut on a console (the Super Nintendo). Published by Nintendo, it also marked DMA's first game without Psygnosis, which was bought out by Sony in 1993. This was the beginning of what would be a long and often bumpy relationship with the Japanese console giant. After spending some time experimenting with various next-generation consoles (particularly the 3DO), DMA was asked by Nintendo to join their "Dream Team" of developers for the upcoming Ultra 64 system (later renamed Nintendo 64), alongside such other developers as Rare, Paradigm, Acclaim, Midway Games, and LucasArts.

DMA arrangement

Under this arrangement, DMA would produce a title to the N64 that Nintendo would publish. The result of this collaboration was Body Harvest, a third-person 3D vehicular action game with a storyline about aliens arriving on Earth to harvest humans for food. Nintendo requested a number of major overhauls, such as the addition of puzzle and role-playing elements, to make the game more appealing to the Japanese market. The game underwent numerous delays, and Nintendo finally decided to drop their publishing plans. Midway picked up the rights and finally released it in 1998, almost three years after the game was first shown. Reaction was mostly favourable, in particular for the game's innovation and free-roaming gameplay, although a few gamers criticized the graphics.

Grand Theft Auto

In the interim, the company released (through the short-lived BMG Interactive label) Grand Theft Auto for the PC whilst neighbouring developer Visual Science converted the PlayStation version, which applied the Body Harvest play mechanism of allowing control of any vehicle in the environment to a top-down 2D game of cops-and-robbers. The game put the player in the role of a petty hood who works his way up through the criminal ranks in three fictional US cities: Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. GTA (as it was soon known) attracted controversy for its violence, with the Daily Mail calling for an outright ban. The uproar no doubt contributed in some part to making GTA a success. It can be noted, however, that the controversy was due in part to the efforts of publicist Max Clifford planting numerous sensational stories in tabloid newspapers in order to help boost sales of the game.

DMA's second N64 title, Space Station Silicon Valley, was yet another take on the multiple vehicles concept, this time in a 3D platforming environment and with robotic animals such as hovering sheep and turret-equipped turtles – instead of cars and trucks.

Rockstar Games

In 1997, DMA was bought by British publisher Gremlin Interactive, with Jones becoming Creative Director of both companies. Gremlin published two DMA titles – the UK release of Body Harvest and the PC version of Wild Metal Country, a tank combat game with a complex control scheme and realistic physics. In 1999 Gremlin was acquired by French publisher Infogrames for £24 million. Complicating this sale was the pre-existing deal between DMA and BMG Interactive, which had published the first version of Grand Theft Auto, and by 1999 itself had gone through some complex financial moves, becoming Rockstar Games, an internal label of publisher Take-Two Interactive.

Infogrames sold DMA Design to Take-Two. Rockstar published the Dreamcast version of Wild Metal Country (retitled simply Wild Metal) and Grand Theft Auto 2 for the PC, PlayStation and Dreamcast. Prior to DMA becoming part of Rockstar, Jones left, setting up a new development studio in Dundee as a subsidiary of Rage Software. Through a management buy-out, this later became Realtime Worlds.

DMA had several announced projects that were subsequently cancelled in mid-development: Nintendo 64 ports of Wild Metal Country and the original GTA; Clan Wars (a real-time 3D castle building and siege game set in medieval Scotland); Attack! (a caveman-themed platformer for the N64); and a port of Epic Games' PC hit Unreal for the Nintendo 64 disk drive.

Rockstar North

Whereas GTA2 had been an incremental improvement on the original, keeping the top-down 2D perspective and adding a few new features, 2001's Grand Theft Auto III brought the series into 3D. It became the PlayStation 2's biggest system seller in both the U.S. and Europe; Rockstar bought DMA outright, renaming the company "Rockstar North" in early 2002.

That same year a PC version of GTA III was released, as well as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the PS2, which retained the engine and core gameplay of GTA III while adding a number of refinements and a roster of top Hollywood voice talent. In 2003, the company released a PC port of Vice City, as well as a two-pack of both GTA III and Vice City for Microsoft's Xbox console (ported by Rockstar Vienna).

The developer's next release, Manhunt, was released for the PS2 in November 2003 amidst a media frenzy surrounding the game's extremely violent nature. Rockstar North released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PS2 in October 2004, and ports to Xbox and PC followed in 2005.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a new instalment for PlayStation Portable, was released in October 2005. It was developed by Rockstar Leeds, under Rockstar North's supervision. It has been ported to the PlayStation 2 and features a slightly better framerate and draw distance than its PSP counterpart. A second PSP Grand Theft Auto title, Vice City Stories, was also developed by Rockstar Leeds, under Rockstar North's supervision for PSP, and released in October 2006. It was also ported to the PlayStation 2.

The studio has completed its latest title, Grand Theft Auto IV, which was released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 29 April 2008, and marked the debut of the developer's wildly popular GTA franchise on the seventh-generation of video game consoles. GTA IV is Rockstar North's biggest success yet, receiving universally rave reviews and becoming one of the most critically acclaimed video games of all time. GTA IV also broke sales records amongst all types of entertainment media and is hailed as the developer's finest work to date.

Rockstar North continued work on Grand Theft Auto IV in the form of two pieces of episodic downloadable content, one of which is titled The Lost and Damned and was released 17 February 2009 and a second one, The Ballad of Gay Tony which was released on 29 October 2009. Along with The Ballad of Gay Tony, Rockstar released a disc based version of both episodes for the PlayStation 3, the PC, and Xbox 360 titled Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City.

On 2 June 2009 at Sony's E3 conference, it was announced that Agent was being developed by Rockstar North for the PlayStation 3. This was later confirmed in an interview with Ben Feder, President of Take-Two Interactive. The game will be set in the world of the late 1970s. According to Rockstar North, it will "take players on a paranoid journey into the world of counter-intelligence, espionage, and political assassinations".

Rockstar North collaborations

In addition to collaborating with Rockstar Leeds on the portable Grand Theft Auto games, Rockstar North has also collaborated with Rockstar San Diego on their acclaimed Red Dead Redemption, Team Bondi's L.A. Noire and with Rockstar Vancouver's Max Payne 3.

Games

Games developed as DMA Design

Title	Release year	Platform	Notes
Menace	1988	Commodore 64, Amiga, ST and PC
Ballistix	1989	ports to MS-DOS, C64, TG16
Blood Money	1989	Amiga, MS-DOS, ST and C64
Lemmings	1991	Amiga, CDTV, MS-DOS, ST, Spectrum, CD-I, Lynx
Oh No! More Lemmings	1991	Amiga, ST, MS-DOS
Walker	1993	Amiga
Hired Guns	1993	Amiga, MS-DOS
Christmas Lemmings 1993	1993	Amiga, MS-DOS	Known as Holiday Lemmings 1993 in North America
Lemmings 2: The Tribes	1993	Amiga, MS-DOS, SNES, GBC
All New World of Lemmings	1994	Amiga, MS-DOS, 3DO	Known as The Lemmings Chronicles in North America
Christmas Lemmings 1994	1994	Amiga, MS-DOS	Known as Holiday Lemmings 1994 in North America
Unirally	1994	SNES	Known as Uniracers in North America
Grand Theft Auto	1997	MS-DOS, PC, PS1, GBC
Body Harvest	1998	N64
Space Station Silicon Valley	1998	N64
Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969	1999	PC, PS1	Expansion pack for Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961	1999	PC	Free expansion pack for Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969
Tanktics	1999	PC, PS1
Wild Metal Country	1999	PC, Dreamcast
Grand Theft Auto 2	1999	PC, PS1, Dreamcast, GBC
Grand Theft Auto III	2001	PS2

Games developed as Rockstar North

Title	Release year	Platform	Notes
Grand Theft Auto III	2001	PC	With Rockstar Vienna for the Xbox
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City	2002	PS2, PC	With Rockstar Vienna for the Xbox
Manhunt	2003	PS2, PC, Xbox
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas	2004	PS2, PC, Xbox
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories	2005	PSP, PS2	With Rockstar Leeds
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories	2006	PSP, PS2	With Rockstar Leeds
Manhunt 2	2007	PS2, PSP, PC, Wii	Oversaw the development
Grand Theft Auto IV	2008	PS3, PC, X360	With Rockstar Toronto for the PC
Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned	2009	PS3, PC, X360
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars	2009	PSP, DS, iOS	With Rockstar Leeds
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony	2009	PS3, PC, X360
Red Dead Redemption	2010	PS3, X360	With Rockstar San Diego
Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare	2010	PS3, X360	With Rockstar San Diego
L.A. Noire	2011	PS3, PC, X360	With Team Bondi
Max Payne 3	2012	PS3, PC, X360	With Rockstar Studios
Grand Theft Auto V	2013	PS3, X360
Agent	TBA	PS3

External links

• Official website
• Rockstar North Limited at MobyGames
• The DMA History Site by Mike Dailly
• Rockstar founders form 4mm Games
• Rockstar North at Grand Theft Wiki