DEFINING GAMES

Harry POTTER and THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

This was a massive success on the original Playstation in 2001, selling 3.73 million copies. It is fair to say, then, that its publisher EA had high hopes for the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox versions two years later. Warthog was more faithful to the movie and sped up the loading times, but critics pointed out the liberal borrowings from another Harry Potter game, Chamber Of Secrets, and it was that too little money and time was available for the title. Despite that, this action-adventure is by no means a disaster. Fun and child-friendly, it had intelligent puzzles, and a world to explore.

Starlancer

Warthog’s experience in developing space-themed games was stellar, thanks to its creation of Privateer 2 when the team was working at EA Manchester. So for its first game, the fledgling developer teamed up with Digital Anvil to bring first class, first-person, story-driven space combat to the PC and, later, the Dreamcast. The game went down a storm and it became loved for its varied mission goals, jaw-dropping graphics, superb sound effects and speedy combat. The game was also notable at the time for its fine attention to detail and the co-op option for the main campaign. Multiplayer was cut for the Dreamcast version, though.