Zoonami

Last updated

Zoonami
TypePrivate company
Industry Software & programming
Founded1998
Defunct2010
Headquarters Cambridge, United Kingdom
Key people
Martin Hollis
Products Zendoku , Go! Puzzle
Number of employees
10
Website www.zoonami.com [ dead link ]

Zoonami was a video game development company, founded in 1998 by Martin Hollis, the director and producer of GoldenEye 007 . He left Rare shortly before Perfect Dark was released while other members of the GoldenEye 007 team formed Free Radical Design. The studio was closed "a couple years" before 2012. [1] Titles released as Zoonami include Zendoku , Go! Puzzle , and Bonsai Barber .

Contents

Games developed

In October 2006, Eidos announced Zendoku , a Sudoku-based game developed by Zoonami for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. Zendoku was released in the United States on 12 June 2007, and was released in Europe on 20 April 2007.

Zoonami released its second game, Go! Puzzle for the PlayStation 3's downloadable service in February 2009. Go! Puzzle's mini-games and characters were designed by Zoonami, but the actual development was done by Cohort Studios.

Zoonami released its third game, and the first game for WiiWare, Bonsai Barber , in North America on 30 March 2009, and in Europe on 7 August 2009. It was published by Nintendo.

Dropped projects

A GameCube project originally titled as Game Zero (although the title was dropped when it was discovered that the name conflicted with a pre-existing gaming review magazine) was once in development, though this is considered to no longer be the case. The project was mentioned briefly on the company's website but has not been discussed since its removal from the site and subsequent notice in interviews that the name had been dropped from the project. The game was a radical block-based build-and-mine game for GameCube, similar in concept to Minecraft but predating it by a number of years. [2]

Zoonami also announced a prototype of the one-button music game Funkydilla but were unable to find a publisher for the game. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>GoldenEye 007</i> (1997 video game) 1997 first-person shooter video game

GoldenEye 007 is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. Based on the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, the player controls the secret agent James Bond to prevent a criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon. They navigate a series of levels to complete objectives, such as recovering or destroying objects, while shooting enemies. In a multiplayer mode, up to four players compete in several deathmatch scenarios via split-screen.

<i>Perfect Dark</i> Nintendo 64 video game

Perfect Dark is a 2000 first-person shooter developed and published by Rare for the Nintendo 64. The first game of the Perfect Dark series, it follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute research centre, as she attempts to stop an extraterrestrial conspiracy by rival corporation dataDyne. The game features a campaign mode where the player must complete a series of levels to progress through the story, as well as a range of multiplayer options, including a co-operative mode and traditional deathmatch settings with computer-controlled bots.

<i>GoldenEye</i> 1995 James Bond film by Martin Campbell

GoldenEye is a 1995 spy film, the seventeenth in the James Bond Series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Martin Campbell, it was the first in the series not to utilize any story elements from the works of novelist Ian Fleming. It was also the first James Bond film not produced by Albert R. Broccoli, following his stepping down from Eon Productions and replacement by his daughter, Barbara Broccoli. The story was conceived and written by Michael France, with later collaboration by other writers. In the film, Bond fights to prevent a rogue ex-MI6 agent from using a satellite weapon against London to cause a global financial meltdown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rare (company)</span> British video game developer

Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross, Leicestershire. Rare's games span the platform, first-person shooter, action-adventure, fighting, and racing genres. Its most popular games include the Battletoads, Donkey Kong, and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).

<i>TimeSplitters</i> Video game series

TimeSplitters is a series of first-person shooter video games developed by Free Radical Design. The games are often considered spiritual successors to the Nintendo 64 titles GoldenEye 007 (1997) and Perfect Dark (2000), due to overlapping elements in gameplay, design, and development team. Each game features a time travelling element in which players battle across a diverse number of locations and periods in history.

The James Bond video game franchise is a series centering on Ian Fleming's fictional British MI6 agent, James Bond. Games of the series have been predominantly shooter games, with some games of other genres including role-playing and adventure games. Several games are based upon the James Bond films and developed and published by a variety of companies, The intellectual property is owned by Danjaq.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Radical Design</span> British video game developer

Free Radical Design Ltd. was a British video game developer based in Nottingham. Founded by David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton and Graeme Norgate in Stoke-on-Trent in April 1999, they are best known for their TimeSplitters series of games. After going into financial administration, it was announced on 3 February 2009 that the studio had been acquired by German video game developer Crytek and would be renamed Crytek UK. Crytek had a good relationship with the city of Nottingham due in part to its sponsorship of the Gamecity festival and its recruitment drives with Nottingham Trent University. In 2014, the studio would close and a majority of the staff transferred to the newly formed Dambuster Studios. In May 2021, the original founders reformed the studio, led by Doak and Ellis, to create a new entry in the TimeSplitters series. The reformed studio incarnation operated under Deep Silver. The second iteration was shutdown on December 11, 2023.

Goldeneye or GoldenEye may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Hollis (video game designer)</span> British video game designer

Martin Hollis is a former British video game designer best known for his work at Rare and directing and producing the critically acclaimed Nintendo 64 first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007, released in 1997. In 2000, he left Rare to found Zoonami, a defunct video game development company that was based in Cambridge and closed in 2010. His final release was Bonsai Barber in 2009.

Kenneth Alan Lobb is an American video game designer formerly employed by Taxan USA Corp., Namco Hometek, and Nintendo of America, and currently employed by Xbox Game Studios as Creative Director. He is best known as co-creator of the Killer Instinct series.

<i>Mr. Driller Drill Land</i> 2002 video game

Mr. Driller Drill Land is a 2002 puzzle video game developed and published in Japan by Namco for the GameCube. It is the fifth entry in the Mr. Driller video game series, and the second developed for a Nintendo platform following Mr. Driller A. Controlling one of seven characters, the player must make it to the bottom of each stage by destroying colored blocks, which can connect to each other and form chain reactions. The game is divided into five different modes themed as amusement park attractions, which feature new mechanics such as enemies, items and different block types.

<i>Zendoku</i> 2007 video game

Zendoku is a 2007 puzzle video game developed by Zoonami and published by Eidos Interactive for the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable handheld consoles.

David Doak is a Northern Irish video game designer. Originally from Belfast, he later moved to England, where he studied at Oxford University on biochemistry specialty and worked as a research scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noise (video game company)</span> Japanese video game development company

NOISE Inc. is a Japanese video game development company that works in partnership with Nintendo, developing games for the Custom Robo series.

<i>Bonsai Barber</i> 2009 video game

Bonsai Barber is a barber-simulation video game developed by Zoonami and released for the Wii console in 2009 in North America, Japan, and the PAL Regions. This video game was a featured WiiWare title for 1,000 Wii Points on the Wii Shop Channel.

<i>GoldenEye 007</i> (2010 video game) 2010 video game

GoldenEye 007 is a 2010 first-person shooter video game developed by Eurocom and published by Activision for the Wii, with a handheld version for Nintendo DS developed by n-Space. It is a modern reimagining of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye as well as a remake of the 1997 video game of the same name, developed for the earlier Nintendo 64 console. The game was officially announced by Nintendo at their E3 2010 conference presentation. The game was released on 2 November 2010 in tandem with another James Bond game, Blood Stone, which was also released for the DS, but not the Wii. Nintendo, the publisher of the Nintendo 64 game, published the Wii version in Japan the following summer, where it remains Wii-exclusive. It was the fifth James Bond game developed by Eurocom and their second under Activision, after the PlayStation 2 version of 007: Quantum of Solace two years prior.

<i>Minecraft</i> 2011 video game

Minecraft is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios and originally released in 2009. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being fully released in November 2011, with Notch stepping down and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten taking over development. Minecraft has become the best-selling video game in history, with over 300 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active players as of 2023. It has been ported to several platforms.

Duncan Lewis Botwood is a British video game designer and voice actor. He worked for British game developer Rare from 1995 to 2008. He was senior designer at the company. Botwood's first work was GoldenEye 007.

<i>Minecraft Dungeons</i> 2020 video game

Minecraft Dungeons is a 2020 dungeon crawler video game developed by Mojang Studios and Double Eleven and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is a spin-off of the sandbox video game Minecraft and was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in May 2020, and for Xbox Series X/S in February 2021. It was also adapted into an arcade video game by Raw Thrills. The arcade version released in May 2021.

References

  1. "Damien, just a heads up, I closed Zoonami a couple years back so I can't claim to be the head of it. Nice piece otherwise!".
  2. "How to Succeed at Designing GoldenEye. How to Fail at Designing Minecraft". [Start/Select] PLAY.
  3. Jon Jordan. "The Restless Vision of Martin Hollis, The Man with the GoldenEye". Gamasutra.