Creative Assembly (officially The Creative Assembly Ltd) is a British video game developer established in 28 August 1987 by Tim Ansell , best known for their Total War strategy games series (Composed by Shogun, Medieval and Rome) and some sports games developed for distribution under EA's EA Sports label between 1993 and 2000. On March 9, 2005 Creative Assembly was acquired by Sega.
Like many other British companies that appeared in the early 90's, Sussex based The Creative Assembly originally dealt with DOS ports of Amiga and ZX Spectrum games such as Geoff Crammond's Stunt Car Racer or the popular Shadow of the Beast by Psygnosis, and the popular FIFA International Soccer by EA Sports. Although based in the UK, Creative Assembly worked mostly with the Australian EA studios, which reflected on the titles produced with the Burnaby-based company - the official title of the 1995 RWC and of the 1999 cricket World Cup, two games licensed by the AFL (AFL'98 and AFL '99), and a return to Rugby, with Rugby 2001 (which carried the license of the 1999 RWC, but was delayed).
Although already well known inside the sports gaming comunity, the major breakthrough into the mainstream was the first game in the Total War series - Shogun: Total War. A mix between a turn based game similar to KOEI's Nobunaga's Ambition and massive real time strategy, which could include thousands of units who were actually affected by weather and terrain conditions, the game set in Sengoku period Japan was a critical success, which reflected in massive sales and. One expanion (Mongol Invasion) and two sequels, Medieval: Total War (which also had one expansion named Viking Invasion) and Rome: Total War followed.
Given the potential of the Total War series and expertise with sports games, Sega acquired them on 9 March 2005 as a part of a company investment in European software houses for a reported sum of around US $ 30M.
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