EA Pacific was the last name of an Irvine, California studio whose history runs through three of the biggest labels in PC gaming. It started in 1986 as the internal American development division of Mastertronic and then Virgin Games, owned by Virgin Interactive's North American operations. In 1995 the team took the name Burst Studios on the suggestion of producer Neil Young. Burst had a rough first few years. In 1997 Brett W. Sperry, Virgin Interactive's president of worldwide publishing and the co-founder of Westwood, admitted that the studio's structure "made a lot of sense on paper, but for a variety of reasons, it wasn't delivering product at the end of the day." Things changed in August 1998, when Electronic Arts bought Burst along with Westwood Studios and Virgin's North American publishing business. Renamed Westwood Pacific, the Irvine team became a West Coast arm of the house that built Command & Conquer. As Westwood Pacific it developed or co-developed Nox and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, and it shares credit with Westwood Studios on Red Alert 2 and its Yuri's Revenge expansion. That is the alternate-history war of Allied Chrono Legionnaires, Soviet Kirov Airships and Yuri's psychic army that many strategy players still treat as the high point of the classic formula.
Under its final name, EA Pacific, the studio still had Westwood veterans on staff, including a senior modeler from the original 1995 Command & Conquer. That team took on the series' leap into full 3D. EA began building a new engine in 2001, known as the Strategy Action Game Engine (SAGE). It grew out of Westwood's W3D technology from Command & Conquer: Renegade and Earth & Beyond and added dynamic lighting that cast realistic shadows and reflections, sharper effects and a stop-motion camera. Its first game was Command & Conquer: Generals, a modern-day three-way conflict between the United States, China and the Global Liberation Army, with general's powers that reward commanders who rank up in battle. In January 2003 EA announced that it would close both Westwood and EA Pacific and merge them into EA Los Angeles, which finished Generals. Some of the staff went on to Petroglyph Games, and SAGE went on to power later Command & Conquer titles and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. The studio's share of the series lives on today in Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection, where Red Alert 2, Yuri's Revenge, Generals and the Zero Hour expansion sit alongside the rest of the 17-game run.
