Argonaut's return to the sea with water-racer Carve for Xbox

12th May 2003, London, UK. Today, Argonaut Games is delighted to announce Carve, the watercraft based racer for Xbox, featuring intense team-based AI, a mass of extreme tricks and full online racing via Microsoft's Xbox Live

Carve harnesses the sheer power of Xbox to create a race experience that mixes thrills and authenticity in equal measures. Each of the twenty-seven levels are visually resplendent with an authentic atmosphere, ensured by the dedicated team jetting off to Thailand, Iceland, Amsterdam and the Grand Canyon on research matters, before channelling their discoveries back into the game.

Comic-styled characters have exactly that – character, each animated down to the individual finger bone. But there's nothing comic about the way they do battle with the player, pairing up in teams to deliver one of the freshest racing game AIs ever seen.

Its water technology is making waves too, leading to the most attractive recreation of the sloshing wet-stuff yet seen in a game. Highly optimised Environment-Mapped Bump-Mapping (EMBM) technology provides the sparkle and reflections, while physics leads to waves interacting in ways that deliver unique gameplay for every level and floating objects that react in a convincing manner. For subscribers to Xbox Live, Carve features fast and furious racing for up to eight players.

Producer Caspar Field enthuses, "Carve offers advances in so many areas: the waves, team AI and trick systems - never mind the online mode –all are fantastic additions to the genre. We're pushing things forwards - for us, that's the point. Anything less would be a waste of time."

While the waters in Carve are choppy, its journey so far has been plain sailing, notes Joss Ellis, Argonaut's Chief Operating Officer, "Carve is a truly great title, which demonstrates Argonaut's ability to create top race titles. We're immensely pleased with its speedy progress and look forward to releasing it in the near future".

About Argonaut Games PLC

Argonaut Games PLC (AGT: LSE) is one of the largest independent developers in the world and was established 20 years ago by Jez San OBE, widely regarded as one of the industry's founding fathers - credited with creating the first ever 3D game, StarGlider in 1984. With almost 300 staff across 5 UK studios, London (HQ), London (Morpheme), Oxfordshire (LT Studios), Cambridge (J.A.M.) and Sheffield the company is currently developing for all major platforms including Xbox, Xbox Live, PS2, PS2 Online, GameCube, PC and, since the acquisition of wireless game developer Morpheme, is also now making games for mobile phones, PDAs and other mobile devices.

In 1993 Argonaut developed the revolutionary SuperFX chip, a 3D graphics accelerator for the Nintendo 64 and produced 3 titles that utilised the technology. Star Fox N64 rapidly became the then best selling game of all time, shifting over 4 million copies worldwide.

The company floated on the UK Stock Exchange in March 2000 and recently celebrated its sixth million selling title - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (EA - PSOne). Previous multi-million selling successes include: Croc: The Legend of Gobbos (Fox - PSOne, over 3 million units sold); Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (EA - PSOne, over 3 million units sold), StarFox (Nintendo - N64 over 4 million units sold) bringing the total number of games sold to over 15 million. Argonaut has built a solid reputation for creativity and reliability in developing both original and licensed titles for the world's leading publishers, including Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Lego, Sega, Nintendo, Vivendi Universal, Disney, Sierra and Namco Hometek Inc.
 

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