Top Five British Video Game Innovations

For Queen, Country, and Cartridge.
What have the Brits done for video gaming?

In the globalized world of video game industry, it's increasingly difficult to say that a game is from any given country, considering the decentralized and open marketplace that currently makes up the video game business. With developers working from studios in all corners of the globe, the days of “English” games or “American” games are over. Looking back on the history of gaming, though, our friends across the pond have provided us with quite a few innovations and great games. In honor of their advances, today, we count down the top five video game developments to come out of Britain.

5. Isometric 3D
   
   
   It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when rendering in full 3D was a amazing thing. Yes, back in the stone age, in the year 1983, Ant Attack for the ZX Spectrum computer was the very first game to feature a fully rendered 3D game in an isometric perspective. While that might not seem like a big deal, if you think of the games that have followed in Ant Attack's footsteps, the game's import starts to come into perspective. Everything from Age of Empires to Diablo owes a debt of gratitude to Sandy White, the programmer behind this gem. It may not have lined his pockets, but Ant Attack certainly cemented his place in video game history.
   
   

4. Starfox on the SNES

“Wait,” you may be saying, “Starfox is a Nintendo game, right?” You would be correct; Starfox was developed by Nintendo, but it never would have been possible without a little British company called Argonaut. The SNES by itself would never have had the processing power to deliver the polygonal goodness of Starfox, it was only through the power of the Super FX processor chip created by Argonaut that Nintendo was able to release Starfox in 1993. Other games featuring incarnations of the Super FX chip include Doom on the SNES and Yoshi's Island. A number of games began development on using the Super FX chip and were then moved to the Nintendo 64, most notably, Starfox 2, which was nearly finished before it was scrapped with some of the ideas being transferred to Starfox 64. The Super FX chip was also nearly the host of what went on to become Super Mario 64. While the development was switched to the N64 early on, the idea is tantalizing enough as it is.

3. Rareware

Rare ltd., formerly known as Ultimate Play the Game and Rareware has developed and published some of the best games of the 1990's. Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, Goldeneye 007, Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie, and Battletoads are all the from the minds of Rare, and if those games don't convince you of Rare's importance, I just don't know what to say. Though Rare may not have have done much in recent years, they were the kings of the Nintendo 64, and for that, they will never be forgotten.

2. Grand Theft Auto

DMA Design was a little Scottish developer until they released Lemmings in 1990, and while it was a big success at the time, Lemmings hasn't had the same amount of legacy as the game they released just a few years later: Grand Theft Auto. A top down shooter/RPG for DOS, PC, and Playstation that evolved into one of the biggest franchises of all time. Now known as Rockstar North, DMA (which stood for Doesn't Mean Anything) has gone on to develop the Manhunt games, every iteration of the Grand Theft Auto series, and Red Dead Redemption. Alternately brilliant and tasteless, Rockstar North continues to wow as one of the foremost developers
from the British Isles.

1. First-Person Shooters

What's this? Surely first-person shooters were the doing of Id Software, right? Wrong. While Id was behind the most famous of the early first-person-shooters, Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, etc., It was UK developer Core design that brought us one of the first games of that genre. Corporation is a game that predates the release of Id's shooters, and while it's hard to pin down exactly which game is the first in this billion-dollar style, Corporation is really the first to feature a recognizable first-person shooter gameplay experience. Without the efforts of Core design (which also developed the Tomb Raider series), the video game industry would certainly be very different today.

And that really goes for all games and all developers. The greatest of artists are the best of thieves, and as with other areas of art, each new game stands on the shoulders of the games that have come before it. As Americans, we might be apt to overlook the achievements of European game companies in favor of a focus on US and Japanese games. These are just a few of the thank you's we owe to other countries, if we weren't already too busy playing their games.

--Tom