Founded in 1994, Boss Game Studios Inc. was originally formed as an independent offshoot of Boss Film Studios, who created special effects for films such as Ghostbusters, Masters of the Universe, and Die Hard. The studio's first project, being developed by a team of three in 1995, was to be called 3D Tank for the Virtual Boy. Not much is known of the title, as development of it ceased prior to the release of so much as a screenshot. What is known is that the game was a first-person sci-fi tank sim, likely akin to the Atari classic, Battlezone. After scrapping the project, and moving away from the Virtual Boy, Boss Studios hit the industry in 1997 with their first release, Top Gear Rally, to mostly positive praise. Though the studio largely specialized in racing games for the Nintendo 64, they did release a third-person action game for the Playstation titled Spider: The Video Game in 1997, as well as Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding for the Nintendo 64 in late 1998.
In late April 1999, Boss released their first PC title, Boss Rally, followed a month later by the game for which they are probably best known, World Driver Championship for the Nintendo 64. World Driver Championship was a major accomplishment due to being an incredibly graphically intensive simulation that efficiently utilitzed the various processors of the Nintendo 64 to allow for things like farther draw distances, higher detailed texturing, and realistic weather conditions, as well as offering a high resolution mode of 640x480 that did not require the N64 RAM Expansion Pak add-on. Though WDC was technically impressive, it did not quite enjoy the commercial success Boss Studios might have hoped for. This was largely due to stiff competition in the genre, being paired up with the newcomer, Gran Turismo, as well as some general distaste for the sound quality and vehicle handling.
In 2000, Boss Studios released what was to be their final title, Stunt Racer 64. As the name would imply, this title did not follow in the footsteps of its simulation predecessors, but was more of an arcade, stunt-based racer. Though the game was mostly received well by critics, the Midway-published title was deemed "rental only," a treatment generally administered to less-than-average Nintendo 64 titles. This is likely due to the fact that Midway's other published stunt racer, San Francisco Rush 2049 had just hit retail a mere month preceding Stunt Racer 64's release.
After the release of Stunt Racer 64, Boss Studios moved on to the next generation and began development of a new racing title, this time for the Xbox. RacerX was to be its name, and in an interview with IGN, Boss Studios' CEO, Colin Gordon, described the game as follows: "In our view it would have been the best Xbox racer to date. It was running at 60 frames per second. It had 25,000 polygon cars along with full scene reflections, skinned drivers and more. We had flag wavers and birds on-screen. We had leaves on the tracks that would blow up as cars drove by -- more leaves on the track than there were polygons in a World Driver track." He went on to claim that the studio actually ported RacerX to the Gamecube in a mere five weeks, but never pursued discussions with Nintendo regarding publishing it for the console. Though RacerX appeared to be making good progress, the studio was unable to secure a publisher, and on June 14, 2002, Boss Game Studios closed their doors, ceasing development on RacerX.
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