The Making of Unirally – GamesTM (2007)

TITLE
The Making of Unirally

AUTHOR
Damien McFerran

PUBLICATION
GamesTM

YEAR
2007

ARTICLE TYPE
Article

FROM THE ARTICLE
If you consider yourself to be a true artisan then there’s nothing worse that pouring your heart and soul into creating something truly breathtaking only to then be accused of flagrant plagiarism; such an allegation robs you of the unique satisfaction that crafting something truly beautiful brings. Spare a thought then for the development team of Unirally – they succeeded in forging an astoundingly enjoyable piece of software that was robbed of the limelight thanks to largely unfounded claims of idea-theft.

Developed by Scottish code house DMA Design and published for Nintendo’s dominant Super NES console in 1994, Unirally (or Uniracers as it was known outside of Europe) was anything but a conventional video game release. Announced in the CGI-tinged wake of Donkey Kong Country, DMA’s racer was initially viewed with almost equal amounts of suspicion and expectation – the visuals possessed that shiny rendered look that so many developers craved at the time but also retained a degree of simplicity that lead many early sceptics to comment that it was little more than glorified tech demo. Ironically, this was actually closer to the truth than many suspected.

The birth of Unirally, like so many of DMA’s other titles, is typically unorthodox.

COMPANIES MENTIONED
DMA Design [Rockstar North]
Pixar

GAMES MENTIONED
Uniracers [Unirally]

PRINT AVAILABILITY
December 2007 (Issue 64)