Dead Space was built from the bones of Tiger Woods PGA Tour

Dead Space's Isaac Clarke has popped up in some unlikely places over the years: when he's not been cutting up monsters on mining ships you might've spotted him on the links in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, running the floor in NBA Jam: On Fire Edition or grinding rails in Skate 3. These crossovers, usually in the form of character outfits, have always felt bizarre, but in Tiger Woods' case it turns out Clarke had a good reason to feel right at home with a driver in hand.

Hey, Dead Space LD here. All these games used the same basic model rig, so adding Isaac was as simple as importing the model. Dead Space’s engine was a branch off of Tiger Woods, which was made in the same studio as Dead Space back then.October 12, 2019

Studios often re-use or modify engines between different series, but the fact two games in such different genres share the same lineage is interesting. It makes me wonder what other unlikely pairs of games were offshoots of each other: some googling reveals that Metal Gear Solid 5 was built using the same engine—Konami's Fox Engine—as many of the Pro Evolution Soccer games, for example.

EA Redwood Shores developed the Tiger Woods games from 2000 to 2007, two years before Dead Space came out, but the series has remained under the EA umbrella since then.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.