DMA leaves Psygnosis for Nintendo's Dream Team
A unicycle racer, a Pixar lawsuit, and a seat on the team building Nintendo's next console pull DMA into a very different kind of partnership
Quick facts
- First Nintendo game
- Uniracers / Unirally (1994, Super Nintendo)
- Lawsuit
- Pixar sued over the unicycle vs its film Red's Dream, and won
- Consequence
- No further cartridges pressed; capped at the initial 300,000-copy run
- Console partner
- Nintendo's Dream Team for Project Reality / Ultra 64 / N64
- Early status
- One of three outside studios signed (with Rare and Acclaim), with SGI Onyx dev machines
- The project
- Body Harvest, an ambitious 3D game
- Met
- Shigeru Miyamoto
- New dynamic
- Nintendo hands-on and demanding, unlike the hands-off Psygnosis
What happened
After years of publishing through Psygnosis, DMA's next partner was Nintendo itself. Its Super Nintendo racer Uniracers, known in Europe as Unirally, was a fast game built around riderless unicycles, published by Nintendo in 1994. Pixar sued over the unicycle's resemblance to the one in its 1987 short film Red's Dream; the court sided with Pixar, and Nintendo agreed to press no more cartridges, capping the game at its initial 300,000-copy run. DMA was then invited onto Nintendo's Dream Team, the group of studios developing for its next console, known first as Project Reality and later as the Ultra 64 and then the Nintendo 64. The commitment was real and early: Next Generation reported in January 1995 that only three outside developers had signed on, DMA, Rare, and Acclaim, and that DMA was among the few studios with development hardware, shipped Silicon Graphics Onyx workstations while the console's chipset was still being finished. The team got an early look at the hardware and met Shigeru Miyamoto, and set to work on an ambitious 3D game, Body Harvest. The working relationship was nothing like the hands-off Psygnosis years: Nintendo was deeply involved, with its American and Japanese branches often pulling the design in opposite directions and hard to satisfy.
Why it matters
This is the moment DMA stopped depending on one hands-off publisher and pushed into ambitious 3D console development. It also put the studio under a partner that wanted real creative control, and the friction that created sharpened DMA's appetite for independence. That instinct, to make the game it wanted rather than the game a cautious partner asked for, is exactly what would later produce something as uncompromising as Grand Theft Auto.
How we know
The Dream Team membership, the early Project Reality hardware, and the meeting with Miyamoto come from a making-of feature built on a first-hand DMA developer account. The Pixar lawsuit and its outcome come from a GamesTM making-of reproduced by Nintendo Life, with co-creator Mike Dailly on the record that Nintendo agreed to make no more cartridges, leaving Unirally with only its initial 300,000-copy run. Contemporary print confirms the partnership's weight: Next Generation's January 1995 issue lists DMA among the only three third-party studios signed for the Ultra 64, and among the only developers with kits. Body Harvest's ordeal and release are the next chapter of this timeline.
Sources
- Time Extension. The Making Of: Body Harvest, The N64 Cult Classic That Went Through Development Hell (Time Extension) (2015) · Reputable sourcetimeextension.com · The domain "timeextension.com" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Damien McFerran. The Making of Unirally (GamesTM feature, reproduced by Nintendo Life) (2010) · Reputable sourcenintendolife.com · The domain "nintendolife.com" is on our Reputable source registry.
- Next Generation. Next Generation issue 1 (January 1995), contemporary Ultra 64 reporting, archived scan (1995) · Reputable sourcearchive.org · The domain "archive.org" is on our Reputable source registry.
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