Brian Jobling once summed up his company’s history as a full circle. “Starting with £1.99 tape cassette games, we’ve moved up to full price console £59.99 retail games and now, with the build up of mobile gaming, we are back to 99 pence!” The company he had co-founded in 1987 as the Newcastle budget label Zeppelin Games, spent its second life as Eutechnyx, a studio that made almost nothing but driving games: racing cars, trucks, a James Bond car game and the official NASCAR games.
Fast facts
- Same company as: Zeppelin Games, registered on 30 September 1987; renamed Merit Studios (Europe) in 1994 and Eutechnyx on 12 March 1997.
- Run by: Brian Jobling and his brother Darren.
- Based: Newcastle upon Tyne, later Gateshead.
- Games: Total Drivin’ (1997), Max Power Racing, Le Mans 24 Hours (1999), 007 Racing, Big Mutha Truckers and its sequel, Ferrari Challenge, NASCAR games, Auto Club Revolution.
- NASCAR business sold: 2014.
- Dissolved: 20 May 2025.
A new name for CD consoles
By the mid-nineties Zeppelin had been sold to the American publisher Merit Studios and renamed Merit Studios (Europe). For the new CD-based consoles it took another name. Darren Jobling found it in an old dictionary, “just below Eurythmics”, Brian told Retro Gamer: “Eutechnics”, meaning “a well-ordered sequence of events”, which he thought exactly described computer game code. The domain name was taken, so it became Eutechnyx. “We have regretted it ever since, having to spell it at least five times every day!”
The renamed company left Merit, earned a licence to develop and publish PlayStation games and signed a three-year publishing deal with Infogrames. It had two PlayStation games in development, Brian recalled: a role-playing game called Sato City and a driving game, Total Drivin’. Infogrames wanted a racing game. “So, Total Drivin’ it was and the rest is history!” Edge previewed it in August 1997, noting a coding tool that worked out what the driver could see from the car and drew only that.
Le Mans and the racing years
The Infogrames years set Eutechnyx’s course. After Total Drivin’ and Max Power Racing came Le Mans 24 Hours, sold in America as Test Drive Le Mans. When Edge visited the Newcastle studio in early 1999 the team was trying to fit the 24-hour race into a console. The PC version would put all 48 cars on the 13km Circuit de la Sarthe; the PlayStation would manage 16. There was a full 24-hour mode with a save option in the pits, and parts could fall off the cars. “They’re limping back into the pits,” said the programmer Andrew Perella. Edge wondered what would happen to a PlayStation left running for 24 hours. At the end of 1999 PC Zone introduced the developer as “formerly known as Merit Software (formerly known as Zeppelin Games)”, with “some 300 games” behind it.
When the Infogrames deal ended, Retro Gamer reports, the Jobling brothers bought out the French company’s interest to regain control. Licences followed: 007 Racing, built around the cars of the James Bond films, Ferrari Challenge and NASCAR. Big Mutha Truckers, a comic trucking game, was by Brian’s account a million-seller, and the one game of more than 350 that brought the company death threats, from American truckers who took offence at its picture of their lives. A sequel followed in 2005, published in Britain by Empire.
Free-to-play and the end
By 2010 Brian Jobling was managing director and the company was based in Gateshead. That year it took $10 million of venture capital, which went into Auto Club Revolution, a free-to-play racing game run partly in a web browser, with car makers supplying their design data so the models matched the real cars. In 2012, with Darren Jobling as chief operating officer, it made a free standalone game for BMW, The BMW Experience, that linked to Auto Club Revolution.
The business did not last much longer. Eutechnyx sold its NASCAR business in 2014, and in 2015 some of its staff moved to ZeroLight, a company making 3D virtual showrooms for car manufacturers. The company first registered as Zeppelin Games in 1987 was dissolved on 20 May 2025.
Sources
- Andrew Fisher, “In Pole Position”, Retro Gamer issue 119, October 2013, pp. 62–67: the sale to Merit; the Eutechnyx name; leaving Merit; the PlayStation licence and the Infogrames deal; Sato City and Total Drivin’; Le Mans 24 Hours (Test Drive Le Mans in America); 007 Racing; Big Mutha Truckers, its sales and the death threats; buying out Infogrames; NASCAR, Ferrari Challenge; Auto Club Revolution; Gateshead; “full circle”.
- Edge issue 48, August 1997, p. 42: Total Drivin’ preview.
- Arcade issue 6, May 1999, pp. 46, 49 and 63: Andrew Perella, programming manager at Eutechnyx, “the team behind such PlayStation racing titles as Max Power Racing and Total Drivin’”; Max Power Racing (Infogrames); Le Mans 24 Hours.
- Edge issue 69, March 1999, pp. 33–36: Le Mans 24 Hours in development at Eutechnyx in Newcastle (48 cars, 16 on PlayStation, the 24-hour mode, component failure; Andrew Perella; marketing director Paul Jobling).
- PC Zone issue 83, December 1999, p. 54: Le Mans 24 Hours; “formerly known as Merit Software (formerly known as Zeppelin Games)”; “some 300 games”.
- Edge issue 153, September 2005, p. 89: Big Mutha Truckers 2 (Empire, developer Eutechnyx).
- Edge issue 214, May 2010, p. 53: North East England advertisement quoting Brian Jobling, managing director of the Gateshead-based Eutechnyx.
- Edge issue 236, January 2012, pp. 18–19: Auto Club Revolution; the $10 million of venture capital two years earlier; manufacturers’ CAD data.
- Edge issue 242, July 2012, pp. 20–21: The BMW Experience; Darren Jobling, chief operating officer.
- “More jobs go at Eutechnyx as 22 head to ZeroLight”, MCV, 24 July 2015 (web, secondary): staff joining ZeroLight; the NASCAR business sold the previous year. https://mcvuk.com/?p=68199
- Companies House, company 02172322 (web): incorporated 30 September 1987; names Zeppelin Games Limited, Merit Studios (Europe) Limited and Eutechnyx Limited; dissolved 20 May 2025. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02172322