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The birth of Grand Theft Auto:

Platform games had served DMA well and Dailly had been impressed by the new graphical approach from Sega’s Clockwork Knight. Although at heart a traditional side-view platformer, Knight used the 3D abilities of the new Saturn console to add a perspective display to the platforms. This gave them a convincing depth, the end nearest the player looming large, and reducing as it receded into the distance. Dailly had prototyped the effect, and liked it. Could DMA could use this approach for a new game of its own?

A chance remark about top-down racing games, however, got Dailly thinking: “It occurred to me that although I had a side-on engine, all I needed to do was add a floor, and it could be an above engine. So, with programmer graphics, I set about using the previous prototype as a base.”