Here’s to the crazy ones. The round pegs in square holes

As you know, we’re always looking for exceptional things. And not just exceptional things in the most commonly associated meaning (you know: good stuff), but also in the more literal definition – ie, games, technology and people that are out of the ordinary, that somehow defy expectations or run against convention. This issue contains some great examples.

In our big interview, for instance, Richard Lemarchand explains why he walked away from Naughty Dog, a studio at the height of its powers, to try something new. It would have been no surprise to see him credited following the inevitable climactic showdown in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, but instead Lemarchand is dedicating his time to helping a new generation of creators make their names at the University Of Southern California.

Elsewhere, we look at the origins of a most unusual breed – a genre of game that UK studios have dominated for years while the fortunes of the region as a whole have wavered. In UK Garage, the cream of the British racing development scene explain how they’ve defied the odds.

And from big studios to small, in New For Old we revisit the console homebrew scene to see how platforms such as Atari’s Jaguar and Sega’s Dreamcast live on thanks to the work of a band of coders, designers and artists determined to carve their own niches even deeper.

Continuing the Dreamcast theme, in The Making Of… Rez we meet with Tetsuya Mizuguchi to discuss the creation of a game that has lost none of its lustre some 13 years after appearing on Sega’s console and PS2. In 2001, we hoped Rez might herald the beginning of a wave of hypnotic audiovisual experiments. That so few others were daring enough to follow in its wake demonstrates how lucky we were to see it at all.

Then there is Rime, from Tequila Works, a studio that is working hard to put Spain on the game-making map. Rime has among its visual influences the art of Joaquín Sorolla and Salvador Dali, while its tale is told not by NPC dialogue but by more experiential means. Exceptional indeed.