Pikmin, Overlord, Little King's Story - European Connection?

Source images fair-use-stolen from Codemasters, Marvelous, Nintendo

I was talking with a co-worker earlier about Overlord, which I'd finally gotten around to starting yesterday, and am in love with. He recently started playing Little King's Story, and we both mused on how they don't control quite as well as Pikmin, despite having the same basic mechanics.

That's when I realized:

- Overlord was developed by Triumph Studios, in the Netherlands; published by Codemasters, in Britain; and features heavily English (as in Jolly Olde) thematic influences and dialog.

- [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_King's_Story]Little King's Story[/url] was developed by Cing and Town Factory, and published by Marvelous, all Japanese - but was released in Europe first, and still isn't out in Japan. It also seems to have European influences, namely monarchy, and Don Quixote.

- Pikmin was Nintendo-developed and -published, in Japan first. But its lead programmer was Colin Reed, who I met once and, if I recall correctly, is quite British. His resume also goes back to Argonaut Software, which is in Britain.

Okay, so that last one is a bit of a stretch. But Little King's Story being released first in Europe is bizarre enough that I feel like this might be more than just a coincidence.

Is there some old game like these that every European kid has played, but we never heard of on the other side of the Atlantic? Is this all Peter Molyneux's fault, somehow? I suspect the worst. (Well, as bad as something can be that brings us games like Pikmin, Overlord, and Little King's Story.)

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LOOK WHO CAME:

TSuereth