Rockstar San Diego (formerly known as Angel Studios) is an American video game development studio from Carlsbad in San Diego County, California, founded in January 1984 by Diego Angel. The studio is best known for creating the best-selling Red Dead franchise, the Midnight Club franchise, and being the creators of Rockstar Games' proprietary Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) engine.
Description[]
Angel Studios was founded in 1984, and mostly made games for the Nintendo Entertainment System using the Super Sentai licence. They also ported the incredibly popular PlayStation game Resident Evil 2 to the Nintendo 64 in 1999. After Rockstar Games' acquisition of the company in 2002, the first game released by the studio under the Rockstar San Diego name was Midnight Club II in 2003.
They are also the developers behind the games Red Dead Revolver (under the oversight and funding of Japanese video game publisher Capcom in 2000) and its hugely successful 'spiritual sequel' Red Dead Redemption as well as the racing series Midnight Club and Midtown Madness and the adventure series Smuggler's Run.
RAGE Technology Group[]
The RAGE Technology Group is a division of Rockstar San Diego opened circa 2004 to develop a proprietary game engine under the name of their parent company Rockstar Games. This decision was made after Criterion Games, the owners of the RenderWare game engine used to develop Rockstar's sixth generation console titles, was acquired by Electronic Arts.
The new internal division of Rockstar San Diego started developing what would later become RAGE, based on Rockstar San Diego's previous Angel Game Engine (AGE), first tested on Rockstar San Diego's 2006 table tennis simulation video game Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis.
Since then, the RAGE Engine has been shared between Rockstar's primary studios to create living open worlds, with the help of third-party middleware components such as NaturalMotion's Euphoria Physics.
Relation with Rockstar North[]
In 2002, the same year DMA Design was acquired by Rockstar Games and rebranded as Rockstar North, Angel Studios was acquired by the publisher's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, in November 2002 and became Rockstar San Diego.
Rockstar North, the British creators of the Grand Theft Auto series, provided additional technical support in the development of Red Dead Redemption – the first open world title of the Red Dead series – due to their experience in developing open worlds.[1][2]
During the development of Grand Theft Auto V circa 2012, Rockstar San Diego provided additional support to Rockstar North.[3][4]
Coincidentally, Rockstar San Diego had a cancelled project codenamed "Agent" prior to any collaboration with Rockstar North, and intended for the sixth generation consoles (PlayStation 2 era). The game itself has no relation with Rockstar North's cancelled Agent title for the seventh generation consoles.[5]
Games[]
As Angel Studios:[]
- Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr.
- Resident Evil 2 (Nintendo 64 port)
- Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest
- Midtown Madness
- Savage Quest
- Smuggler's Run
- Midnight Club: Street Racing
- Test Drive: Off-Road Wide Open
- Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory
- Transworld Surf
- SpyHunter 2
As Rockstar San Diego:[]
- Midnight Club II
- Red Dead Revolver
- Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis
- Red Dead Redemption
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Red Dead Online
Collaborations[]
- Ecco: The Tides of Time (Additional support only; Developed by Novotrade International)
- Mr. Bones (Additional support only; Developed by Zono)
- Resident Evil 2 (Nintendo 64 port only; Franchise created by Capcom)
- L.A. Noire (Additional support only; Developed by Zono)
- Max Payne 3 (Collaborative effort between multiple Rockstar Studios; Franchise created by Remedy Entertainment)
- Grand Theft Auto V (Additional support only; Developed by Rockstar North)
- Grand Theft Auto VI (Collaborative effort between multiple Rockstar Studios; Developed by Rockstar North)
Employees[]
References[]
- ↑ "RED DEAD REDEMPTION: A MAN AND HIS HORSE" - The first part of an epic talk with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser. (IGN - May 8, 2009; Archived)
- ↑ "Red Dead Redemption Exclusive Q&A" - The first part of an epic talk with Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser. (Gamespot - February 10, 2010; Archived)
- ↑ Credits in GTA V#Rockstar San Diego
- ↑ "Rockstar San Diego collaborating on 'GTA V', employee Linkedin uncovered" - Polygon, 30 May 2012
- ↑ "The Agent before Agent, a lost Rockstar San Diego project" - Polygon, 21 February 2019
