helicopter. DMA Design began pursuing open world game design with the first Grand Theft Auto, which allowed players to commandeer various automobiles and shoot various weapons within a mission-based structure. Unlike later games in the series, and indeed many earlier influences, the first two GTA games were 2D, using a top-down perspective. In 1998, DMA moved many of these design concepts into a 3D world, with Body Harvest, a Nintendo 64 game developed by DMA Design. This title featured an open world with nonlinear missions and side-quests, as well as the ability to commandeer and drive a variety of vehicles. As such, it has been retroactively called "GTA in space" (despite the fact that most of the game takes place in various settings on Earth), and is credited with making Grand Theft Auto III possible. Dan Houser has also cited the 3D Mario and Zelda games on the Nintendo 64 as major influences. In 1999, Midtown Madness was released by Angel Studios. This driving game was 3D and featured an open world in an urban environment like Grand Theft Auto. It was however not a sandbox game, as the player could only choose one of the pre-defined gameplay modes. Travelling on foot or switching cars during gameplay was not possible. Rockstar Games approached Angel Studios with a long-term partnership in 1999, which resulted in the creation of video game series Midnight Club (another open world 3D race game) and Smuggler's Run. In November 2000, almost a year before Grand Theft Auto III, Driver 2 by Reflections came out. Set in a 3D open world in an urban environment with the ability to traverse on foot and commandeer other vehicles, Driver 2 featured many aspects of what would later become known as a Grand Theft Auto clone, though violence was restricted to cutscenes.Grand Theft Auto III took the gameplay foundation of the first two Grand Theft Auto games and expanded it into a 3D world, and offered an unprecedented variety of minigames and side-missions. The title was a much greater commercial success than its direct precursors, and its influence was profound. As such, Grand Theft Auto III is credited with popularizing this genre, let alone inventing it. Its release is sometimes treated as a revolutionary event in the history of video games, much like the release of Doom nearly a decade earlier. GamePro called it the most important game of all