Rockstar San Diego

Rockstar San Diego, Inc. (formerly Angel Studios, Inc.) is an American video game developer based in Carlsbad, California. Founded by Colombian artist Diego Angel in 1984, the initial focus of the company was on creating animations and visual effects for various multimedia productions, including films and music videos. Following Angel’s business strategy of not focusing on high-risk business sectors, it started out working in the video game industry in the mid-1990s. Their first such project was contract work for done for Mr. Bones (1996).

Angel Studios proceeded to develop their own games in association with Nintendo (Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr.’s Slugfest) and Microsoft (Midtown Madness and Midtown Madness 2), and produced a technically impressive port of Capcom‘s Resident Evil 2 to Nintendo 64. Impressed with the studio’s work on Midtown Madness, Rockstar Games approached Angel Studios with a long-term partnership in 1999, out of which resulted the successful video game series Midnight Club and Smuggler’s Run.

In November 2002, Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, announced that they had acquired Angel Studios. As part of the deal, Angel Studio was renamed Rockstar San Diego and became part of the Rockstar Games umbrella. Since 2004, Rockstar San Diego houses its internal game engine team, RAGE Technology Group, which develops the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), Rockstar Games’ proprietary engine that has been used in most titles developed for PC and consoles by Rockstar Games’ studios.