Stellar Entertainment is a racing specialist founded by people who helped define the arcade driving game. Paul Ross and Chris Roberts are both Criterion Games veterans who worked on every mainline Burnout release. Their studio is based in Guildford, England, the same town Criterion calls home, and has a second office in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Roberts was the original designer of Burnout. Ross was a lead engineer on the early games, served as technical director on Burnout Revenge, and was online lead on Burnout 3: Takedown and Burnout Paradise. Ross now runs Stellar as founder and CEO, with Roberts as creative director. That shared history shaped the studio's first major project. Electronic Arts handed the pair Burnout Paradise Remastered, with Roberts as creative director and Ross as technical director. It was a return to the open-world streets of Paradise City, launching on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in March 2018 and later reaching PC and Nintendo Switch.
Stellar's next project for EA took it back to another Criterion landmark. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered released on November 6, 2020 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It rebuilt Criterion's 2010 Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit with enhanced visuals, cross-platform multiplayer and the Autolog rivalry system, and included the original game's main DLC. Stellar is credited as developer, and the Criterion and Stellar logos share the trailer's end card. Since then the studio has worked on other EA productions: it assisted on the dodgeball brawler Knockout City in 2021 and worked alongside Criterion on Need for Speed Unbound in 2022. It has also described an unannounced AAA arcade racer in development in Unreal Engine 5 for current consoles and PC. What Stellar offers players is continuity. Its remasters are handled by veterans of the studio that built the originals, so the cop-versus-racer pursuits of Seacrest County and the takedown-heavy chaos of Paradise City keep the feel that made them classics.
