David and Richard Darling, the brothers that co-founded the games giant Codemasters have been awarded with CBEs in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Having initially started the company in their bedroom, Codemasters has gone on to become one of the leading video games publishers producing games like the Colin McRae Rally series and Lord of the Rings online as well as a host of other games on a variety of different platforms.
Originally, the Darling brothers along with their dad created titles for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, and Acorn Electron. These early games started with BMX simulator and progressed to include other simulator titles including Fruit Machine Simulator.
An unlicensed version of Micro Machines on the Nintendo Entertainment System was one of the first big titles to really project their names into the echelons of video game folklore. The NES was supposed to prevent unlicensed games from being created by using a “lock-out chip” but they managed to bypass this with Micro Machines and a number of other titles.
In 2007, the brothers left the company in order to pursue new directions, but Codemasters continues to produce a list of high quality games for a huge number of different platforms.
