Lionhead Studios Limited was a British video game developer founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson. The company is best known for the Black & White and Fable series. Lionhead started as a breakaway from developer Bullfrog Productions, which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was Black & White, a god game with elements of artificial life and strategy games. Black & White was published by Electronic Arts in 2001. Lionhead Studios is named after Webley's hamster, which died not long after the naming of the studio, as a result of which the studio was very briefly renamed to Redeye Studios.
Peter Douglas Molyneux is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White, as well as Theme Park, the Fable series, Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?, and Godus. In 2012 he founded and currently runs 22cans, a video game development studio.
Black & White is a god video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows in 2001 and by Feral Interactive in 2002 for Mac OS. Black & White combines elements of artificial life and strategy. The player acts as a god whose goal is to defeat Nemesis, another god who wants to take over the world. A primary theme is the concept of good and evil, with the atmosphere being affected by the player's moral choices. The core gameplay mechanic of Black & White is the interaction between the player and an avatar creature, who carries out the player's instructions and whose personality and behaviour change in reaction to how they are treated. Multiplayer is supported over a local network or online.
Bullfrog Productions Limited was a British video game developer based in Guildford, England. Founded in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar, the company gained recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous, and is also well known for titles such as Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Magic Carpet, Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper. Bullfrog's name was derived from an ornament in the offices of Edgar's and Molyneux's other enterprise, Taurus Impact Systems, Bullfrog's precursor where Molyneux and Edgar were developing business software. Bullfrog Productions was founded as a separate entity after Commodore mistook Taurus for a similarly named company.
David Carradine was an American actor, director, and producer, whose career included over 200 major and minor roles in film, television and on stage, spanning more than four decades. He was widely known to television audiences as the star of the 1970s television series Kung Fu, playing Kwai Chang Caine, a peace-loving Shaolin monk traveling through the American Old West.
Fable is an action role-playing video game, the first in the Fable series. It was developed for the Xbox, Windows, and Mac OS X platforms by Big Blue Box Studios, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, and was published by Microsoft Studios. The game shipped for the Xbox in September 2004. An extended version of the game, Fable: The Lost Chapters, was released for the Xbox and Windows in September 2005. A port of the game for Mac OS X, created by Robosoft Technologies and published by Feral Interactive, was released in March 2008 after a delay of more than two years due to licensing issues.
Kung Fu Hustle is a 2004 martial arts action comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Stephen Chow, who also stars in the leading role, alongside Huang Shengyi, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Danny Chan Kwok-kwan and Leung Siu-lung in prominent roles. The story revolves around a murderous neighbourhood gang, a poor village with unlikely heroes and an aspiring gangster's fierce journey to find his true self. The martial arts choreography is supervised by Yuen Woo-ping.
The Movies is a business simulation game created by Lionhead Studios for Microsoft Windows and ported to Mac OS X by Feral Interactive. Players run a Hollywood film studio, creating films that can be exported from the game. The Movies was released in November 2005 to positive reviews and several awards, but sold poorly. An expansion, The Movies: Stunts & Effects, was released in 2006.
Mark Healey is a British video game developer from Ipswich, Suffolk. Healey started his career making games for the Commodore 64 home computer – his first published game was KGB Super Spy for Codemasters, which led to developing the educational Fun School series of games for Europress Software.
GameShadow was a gaming community website and an advertising-supported software utility that kept PC gamers up-to-date with patches, game demos, trailers, mods and other content for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 games. GameShadow identifies the product version of supported games installed on a user's PC, then compares them to its database to locate updates for those games. The site also offers gaming industry news, an industry blog, and a Gaming Network. It is available for Microsoft Windows only. GameShadow is based in Over Norton, Oxfordshire, England.
Ninja Theory Limited is a first-party British video game developer for Xbox Game Studios based in Cambridge, England. Notable games it has developed include Kung Fu Chaos, Heavenly Sword, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, DmC: Devil May Cry, and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
LittleBigPlanet is a 2008 platform game developed by Media Molecule and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3, and is the first game of the LittleBigPlanet franchise. The level editor is the main focus of the game, allowing the player to create levels and publish them online. The player controls Sackboy, a customizable ragged doll with the ability to create. Story mode consists of pre-made levels built around Sackboy's basic control scheme, and they are grouped into areas, each centering around a theme; the story revolves Sackboy helping various Creator Curators around LittleBigPlanet before facing the Collector, who has been kidnapping and stealing creations.
Media Molecule Ltd. is a British video game developer based in Guildford, Surrey. Founded in 2006 by Mark Healey, Alex Evans, David Smith, and Kareem Ettouney, Sony Computer Entertainment acquired the firm in 2010. It became part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company is best known for developing the LittleBigPlanet series, 2013's Tearaway, and 2020's Dreams for PlayStation consoles.
Sackboy is a fictional character and main protagonist of the LittleBigPlanet video game series published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Introduced in the 2008 video game LittleBigPlanet, Sackboy is a small, anthropomorphic, humanoid doll-like character made of burlap sack with a brown knit pattern by default, with a zip fastener and button eyes. Sackboy was originally designed to be a "blank canvas" for LittleBigPlanet players, and is fully customisable using costumes which are either in-game unlockable content, or purchased as downloadable content (DLC) from the PlayStation Store. Sackboy was jointly created by the founding members of British game studio Media Molecule. Scottish composer Kenneth Young provided the vocal effects for the character from 2008 to 2014.
Kung Fu Panda is an American martial arts comedy media franchise that originally started in 2008 with the release of the animated film of the same name produced by DreamWorks Animation. Following the adventures of the titular Po Ping, a giant panda who is improbably chosen as the prophesied Dragon Warrior and becomes a master of kung fu, the franchise is set in a fantasy wuxia genre version of ancient China populated by anthropomorphic animals. Although everyone initially doubts him, including Po himself, he proves himself worthy as he strives to fulfill his destiny.
Kung Fury is a 2015 English-language Swedish martial arts comedy featurette film written and directed by David Sandberg. It pays homage to 1980s martial arts and police action films. The film stars Sandberg in the title role, Jorma Taccone, Leopold Nilsson, and a cameo appearance by David Hasselhoff.
Dream Build Play is an annual $75,000 Microsoft video game contest used to promote Microsoft XNA Game Studio and eventually Xbox LIVE Indie Games. It was announced in 2006, started in 2007, and ran until 2012. In 2008 and 2009 it spanned over 100 countries and in 2010 it spanned 110 countries. It was restarted in 2017 as the Dream.Build.Play 2017 Challenge. Notable winners include Dust: An Elysian Tail and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
Siobhan Reddy is a South African-Australian video game executive. She is the studio director of Media Molecule, a video game development studio based in Guildford in the United Kingdom, most famous for their debut title LittleBigPlanet.
Dreams is a game creation system video game developed by Media Molecule and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 4 in February 2020. Players can create and play user-generated content in the forms of games, audiovisual experiences and game assets, which can be shared or remixed to be used in other players' creations.
