From Molar Maul To DriveClub: RIP Veteran Developer John Gibson
TimeExtension has reported that veteran game developer John Gibson has passed away.
John’s most recent game was the online racing game DriveClub from 2014, on the PlayStation 4. However, he can trace his video game career as far back as 31 years before, with ZX Spectrum games Zzoom, a science fiction themed flight combat sim, and Molar Maul, an arcade action style game.
John’s career was closely tied to Sony and its PlayStation, starting with Sony’s acquisition of Psygnosis when he was an employee there. He stayed with Psygnosis until 1998, when he became a part of Warthog Games.
And then, in 2003 he joined Evolution Studios, bringing him back to make games exclusively for Sony .
John’s modern games career stands as a contributor to the entire MotorStorm franchise, and then DriveClub. If you played the original MotorStorm in 2006, or any of the following games, including the one PlayStation Vita MotorStorm game, John was a part of that too.
As noted by Kevin Edwards on Twitter, John was one of the pioneers of the game industry in the UK. Even as he continued his career through the most state of the art video game consoles that we had seen, he lived through UK’s micro-computer boom, and the beginnings of the PlayStation era.
What follows below is a list of some of John’s other notable games in his career:
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – This 1985 game was released on the ZX Spectrum by Denton Designs, a studio that John co-founded. Riding off of the eponymous band’s popularity after their breakout hits Relax and Two Tribes, Frankie Goes To Hollywood is an adventure game where you play a plain ordinary man trying to make your way to PleasureDome by finding every hedonistic thing you can do in game.
Microcosm – A 1993 3D
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