NORTHERN STAR

Rockstar made millions selling Scotland’s natural export: dark comedy

- Jeremy Peel

The Houser brothers were born heirs to the world of gangster cinema. Their mother, Geraldine Moffat, was the glamorous actress who rescued Michael Caine in a convertible in Get Carter. “You didn’t know you had a fairy godmother, did you?” she yelled over the wind and engine noise, before speeding Caine off to a multi-story car park to be assigned his next mission: the killing of a crime boss.

Sam Houser, the eldest brother, grew up on a diet of films like The Getaway and The French Connection, ’70s car chase movies that were cool, brutal, and lacking the clear moral centre of the Hollywood thrillers that had come before. When he was five or six, Sam’s wealthy solicitor father took him to a London jazz club to meet Dizzy Gillespie. “What are you going to do when you grow up, son?” the legendary trumpeter asked. “Are you going to be a bank robber?” Sam would do better than that, enabling millions of bank robberies the world over.

Grand Theft Auto didn’t start in London, though. It was born further north, in the Dundee offices of DMA Design. Though titles like Menace and Blood Money might have suggested vicious Steve McQueen flicks, they were in fact sidescrolling space shooters, part of the ’80s post-arcade culture that made the fortunes of early game development moguls like DMA founder Dave Jones. However, the studio’s first international success wasn’t GTA but Lemmings, the darkly comic yet family-friendly puzzle-platformer. Lemmings was the