Bizarre Creations
 |
|
| Industry | Video games |
|---|---|
| Fate | Acquired, then dissolved |
| Successor |
Lucid Games Hogrocket Grubby Hands Playground Games |
| Founded | 1988 (as Raising Hell Software) 1994 (as Bizarre Creations) |
| Defunct | 18 February 2011 |
| Headquarters | Liverpool, United Kingdom |
| Products |
Geometry Wars series Project Gotham Racing series |
| Parent | Activision |
| Website | www |
Bizarre Creations was a British video game development studio based in Liverpool, best known for their racing titles: Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast) and the followup Project Gotham Racing series (Xbox, Xbox 360). The company has also developed games in other genres, including the Geometry Wars arcade series, plus third-person shooters Fur Fighters and The Club. Bizarre Creations was acquired by publisher Activision in 2007, and subsequently completed its racer Blur in May 2010.
On 20 January 2011, Activision announced Bizarre Creations would close, and later confirmed the date. Bizarre marked the closure by releasing a retrospective video of its life's work.
Bizarre Creations started as Raising Hell Software, founded by Martyn Chudley. Sega scorned "Hell", and the company went nameless for a short time. In 1994, a pending submission to Psygnosis/Sony forced the decision of a new name. The founder tentatively left "Weird Concepts" on the submission documentation. Then a staff member used Microsoft Word's thesaurus, and "Bizarre Creations" stuck.
The Bizarre Creations team was initially five strong, and worked on a concept project called "Slaughter". After seeing the demo, Psygnosis signed the team onto Formula 1 (for PlayStation). Formula 1 went on to become the best selling game in Europe in 1996.
In 2006, the studio announced a break in its racing genre sequence with The Club. A third-person shooter, the game was released on 7 February 2008.
...
Wikipedia