Did Pixar accidentally create Grand Theft Auto?

Everyone except Elon Musk is hyped for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, with some expecting it to be the biggest game of all time both in terms of sales and its scope and ambition. But here's a thought to ponder on while we wait for 19 November. Did Pixar inadvertently spark the birth of Rockstar Games' iconic franchise?

Yes, Pixar the animation studio now owned by Disney, renowned for making Toy Story, Inside Out and now Hoppers (check out the Pixar rules of storytelling). It sounds like a far-fetched claim, but one retro gaming fan has joined the dots to reveal how the studio's litigiousness may have helped push Rockstar (or rather DMA Design as it was then known) towards making the first GTA.

As detailed by Animathias in a post on X, the story starts way back with Uniracers (or Unirally as it was called in Europe). This 1994 racing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was DMA Design's big bet following its hit Lemmings series.

Animathias notes that Pixar launched a lawsuit soon after Uniracers was released, claiming that the developer had copied the game's unicycles from Red's Dream, a four minute animation from 1987 in which a unicycle (Red) dreams of being the star of a circus.

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As part of the settlement, Nintendo agreed to give Pixar a Nintendo 64 game development kit and also to stop publication of the game. That meant DMA had to pivot abruptly.

“Without Uniracers, DMA had to start over without their family-friendly franchise. Nintendo wanted them on the Ultra 64, but it soon became clear to both companies that only one of them was interested in making a cute N64 mascot,” Animathias says.

DMA did continue to work with Nintendo on Kid Kirby, a spin-off for Nintendo's Kirby franchise, but the game was ultimately cancelled. A small team also worked on Body Harvest, which Nintendo eventually dropped and which didn't get released until 1998.

But in the meantime, DMA Design began working on a little PC project called Race n' Chase to showcase a technique Mike Dailly was working on for rendering 3D buildings from a top-down perspective. Initially involving dinosaur-related destruction, the game evolved to feature cars and eventually became Grand Theft Auto, which was released in 1997.

Founder David Jones left DMA around the time it was bought by Take-Two Interactive in 1999, after the release of GTA 2. The studio was rebranded as Rockstar North after the release of GTA 3 in 2001.

Animathias imagines two interesting scenarios. If it weren't for Pixar, would Uniracers have gone on to become a major Nintendo IP that people still play today? And more drastically, would DMA ever have started work on what became GTA?

"If Pixar hadn't done a Disney, we might be Uniracing in Mario Kart World right now," they write. "Meanwhile Grand Theft Auto might be nothing more than a spark in David Jones' eye".

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