Bizarre Creations

Type	Subsidiary of Activision
Founded	1994
Headquarters	Liverpool, United Kingdom
Industry	Video games
Owner(s)	Activision Blizzard
Employees	165
Parent	Activision
Website	Bizzarre Creations Homepage

A screenshot taken from Metropolis Street Racer on the Sega Dreamcast showing the Bizarre Creations logo used during the year 2000-2001.

Bizarre Creations is a video game developer based in the city of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1994. The company is known for specialising in racing-genre videogame titles such as the Sega Dreamcast's Metropolis Street Racer and the followup Project Gotham Racing series released for the Xbox and Xbox 360. The company has also developed a number of other exclusive and multi-platform titles, including the popular arcade-styled Geometry Wars series, as well as the third-person shooting games Fur Fighters and The Club. Following its acqusition by Activision in 2007, Bizarre Creations is working on a new racing videogame called Blur.

[edit] History

Bizarre Creations evolved from Raising Hell Software, a developer of video games founded in 1988 by Martyn Chudley. Sega pressured them over the use of "Hell" in the name so the company went nameless for a short time. In 1994 a submission to Psygnosis/Sony forced the need for a new name. The founder initially put "Weird Concepts" on the submission documententation. Later a staff member used Microsoft Word's thesaurus on the name and "Bizarre Creations" was the suggestion that stuck.

The Bizarre Creations team started off with five people working on a concept project called 'Slaughter'. After seeing the demo, Psygnosis signed on the developer to develop Formula 1 for the PlayStation. Formula 1 became the best selling game in Europe in 1996.

In 2006, the studio announced a departure from their usual racing genre. The Club is a third-person shooter, released on February 7, 2008.

On September 26, 2007, Activision acquired Bizarre Creations^[1]. It announced that PGR4 will be their last game produced for Microsoft Game Studios^[2], who own the rights to the Project Gotham Racing brand, so any future releases to the series will not be Bizarre Creations-developed.

Activision has announced that Bizarre Creations is developing a James Bond based 'driving - racing' game. The game will likely be released sometime in 2010.

[edit] Games

• Blur (in development) - Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC (2010)
• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 — Xbox Live Arcade (2008)
• The Club — Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC (2008)
• Geometry Wars: Galaxies - Nintendo DS, Wii (2007)
• Project Gotham Racing 4 - Xbox 360 (2007)
• Boom Boom Rocket — Xbox Live Arcade (2007)
• Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved — Xbox Live Arcade (2005), Windows Vista (2007), Windows XP (via Steam) (2007)
• Project Gotham Racing 3 — Xbox 360 (2005)
• Project Gotham Racing 2 — Xbox (2003)
• Treasure Planet — PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance (2002)
• Project Gotham Racing — Xbox (2001)
• Fur Fighters: Viggo's Revenge — PlayStation 2 (2001)
• Metropolis Street Racer — Dreamcast (2001)
• Fur Fighters — Dreamcast, PC (2000)
• Formula 1 97 / Formula One: Championship Edition — PlayStation (1997)
• Formula One — PlayStation (1996)
• Wiz 'n' Liz — Sega Genesis, Amiga (1993)
• The Killing Game Show/Fatal Rewind — Sega Genesis (1991), Amiga (1990), Atari ST (1990)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Bizarre Creations official website