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Remake or Sequel
- Thread starter Scutch
- Start date
CrippsCorner
ClioSport Club Member
Astra VXR
Mega-Lo-Mania
Was my favourite Mega Drive game and would work so well over smartphone networks!
Was my favourite Mega Drive game and would work so well over smartphone networks!
Darren S
ClioSport Club Member
Great shout! Where you had the little defending men firing from the turrets of the castles!
Darren S
ClioSport Club Member
Lol - the two things I don't miss on those games m8, were getting the run-up right on Rocket Rocket - iirc, it was left and right motion on the joystick in sync with his steps on the screen? And from ICFTD - trying to shoot those bloody antennae off the ants before they attacked! :smile:
SharkyUK
ClioSport Club Member
Darren S
ClioSport Club Member
No way! That's a shame - the whole B-movie/anti-Nazi platform never gets boring!
I also liked Cinemaware's American Football game (TV Sports Football?) - but it killed the Amiga hardware of the time. It was that over-specced, I'm amazed they even released it. 4th & Inches by US Gold was much better on the C64 - despite looking nowhere near as good!
CrippsCorner
ClioSport Club Member
Astra VXR
Yup and it gradually got more modern as you went on... really good concept.
Not much to it but came across some of my old Amiga games earlier in the week and one of them was Pang! That was a lot of fun
SharkyUK
ClioSport Club Member
System Shock remake... I'll be buying and playing this as soon as I can free up some time. Which could be difficult as Diablo IV will also be after my time.
I'll be buying and playing this as soon as I can free up some time. Which could be difficult as Diablo IV will also be after my time.Out of curiosity, as far as I remember anyone who owned an Amiga or Spectrum or whatever would have owned a copy of Dizzy at some point. In my head I have it as a massive brand at the time.
So..... what type of money would they have made? Like life changing amounts that they could have give up work or decent living or they got by?
If you could pass on my apologies as well because I used to go to a church hall and copy loads of games, probably did a few of theirs. I remember first seeing Animal Farm there with dozens of people crowded round whilst it loaded lol
Daz...
ClioSport Club Member
Inferno 182 Cup
Pretty sure Code Masters published the Dizzy games, I had a few on the C64.
Twin tape decks were very handy in the 80’s!
Yeah, looks like it was 50/50 ownership with them. So even if they received a small royalty for each sell they'd have made a pretty penny even outside profits from the game.
All depends on how any game sells there were.
SharkyUK
ClioSport Club Member
This might turn into a long(ish) post... I have a history with the Oliver Twins who created Dizzy; they gave me my first job in the games industry and have remained friends of mine. I spoke to Andrew Oliver only last week regarding a retro project I've been working on! Amazingly, they are still as passionate about games and gaming as they ever were...
Yes, those of us familiar with early home computers (and/or of a certain age) would have most likely come across a Dizzy game or two on one or more of the popular home computer formats of the time. The Dizzy games were incredibly popular and continued to remain so for many years. In fact, there still exists a strong fan base to this day and various remakes and new Dizzy games are doing the rounds (typically free to play, too).
Andrew and Philip started with their first computer in 1981 when their older brother bought a secondhand Sinclair ZX81 for 50 quid. They took it and started experimenting, largely creating simple games in BASIC (which was tough given the generally crap nature of the system and only having 1K of RAM). They had been well and truly bitten by the bug and so started looking at other systems, such as the BBC Micro and lesser-known Dragon 32. They took on jobs and errands in order to raise a bit of money and decided to buy the Dragon 32 in the end (with a bit of help from their parents) and started making games on that. Sadly, it didn't turn out to be a winning hardware platform in terms of popularity when it was competing against the likes of the C64, Spectrum and BBC Micro... They ended up getting a BBC Micro B a year or so later.
Around 1983 the Twins won a computer game competition and appeared on ITV's The Saturday Show, having designed and written a simple game called Strategy. The prize was actually a BBC Model B computer (which they already had) so they were able to swap it for a high-resolution monitor instead! Most people had no idea what such an item was and it took about 6-8 months to arrive, but it made their job easier in terms of writing future games. Talking of that game competition, they took the game a little further, tidied it up, and a company by the name of Acornsoft took an interest. They offered to buy the game for £1,200 (total) OR for 7.5% royalties on sales, but wanted it renamed - so it became "Gambit". They decided to chase the royalties but then had to suffer a wait of 12 months before Acornsoft finally published and released the game. Sadly, Acornsoft also decided to bundle another game with theirs hence their royalties were halved, too... although they were able to renegotiate a 5% figure in the end. Still, it was far from successful due to the delays, the incompetence of the publisher, and the fact it was written in BASIC (publishers were showing interest in better-performing games written in assembler/machine code). The upshot of this was that they received a measly £166.41 in royalties (and no more). To add insult to injury, the envelope that the cheque arrived in had the wrong postage hence the Twins had to pay 11p to cover the underpayment!
Around that time, early to mid 80's, they would also write some simple games for various lesser-known entities - versions of Bingo, word games, and similar. They would typically get paid £25-£100 quid for a game - i.e. not a lot. They also continued to write a few titles for Acornsoft but ultimately got dumped when their games didn't sell so well. The problem was that the Twins' games were typically sold via mail order and didn't get the big exposure that some others were getting, and their last project for Acornsoft only sold 5 copies total! They weren't to be deterred though.
Anyway, enough of that stuff for now otherwise I'll be typing all night...
Fast forward to 1986 and the Twins had a deal in place with their father... they wanted to write computer games, and their parents wanted to see them go to university. They were both due to study electrical engineering and even had paid scholarships in place. However, they persuaded their parents that a year out was the thing to do so they could focus on making a real go of writing computer games seriously, and their parents agreed. Their father said that, if they made more money in their first year than he earned in that same period, he would forget the idea of university altogether and support them in their video game development ambitions. Well, you can probably guess the outcome...
It was in 1986 that the Oliver Twins met the Darling brothers (David and Richard) at the then PCW show at Olympia. The Darlings were of a similar age to the Olivers and had been writing successful games for Mastertronic. However, the Darlings had a bit of money behind them and were looking to start publishing titles themselves, under the business name of Codemasters. Discussions took place at the booth at the show and the Olivers showed a game design to the Darlings for Super Robin Hood. They asked how much the Darlings would likely pay for such a game, to which they replied £10,000... quite a large sum for two late teens in 1986. They (stupidly) agreed to have the game written in a month(!) and the start of a working partnership under the Codemasters publishing brand was effectively born. At that point, Andrew and Philip were still working in their bedroom at their parents' house and on a single, shared Amstrad computer. In order to get the game done, they estimated they needed a 23-hour workday (with two breaks of half an hour to allow the Amstrad to cool down!) They worked shifts of 18 hours a day, seven days a week and ate whilst they worked. One would sleep whilst the other worked and, when both were awake, one would write code on paper whilst the other coded at the keyboard.
They hit the deadline at month's end and took it along to Codemasters, where they got a bit of a shock. That figure of £10,000 had suddenly become 13.5p per copy sold, which was a little disappointing for them. However, the Olivers signed on the dotted line and agreed to the terms and Super Robin Hood was released soon after. It sold well and went straight to number one within a couple or so weeks. The royalties flooded in and surpassed the 10k mark, and Codemasters decided to port the game to other formats - Spectrum and C64 - for which the Oliver Twins received an additional 5p per copy sold. Ultimately, that first game collaboration made Andrew and Philip a little over 20k. The Olivers' next game would be Ghost Hunters, which also went on to sell well... and then came other familiar games such as Grand Prix Simulator... which made them quite a bit of money and allowed them the opportunity to go out and buy their first car, a shiny new Honda Integra!
And then came Dizzy. The Darling Twins at Codemasters didn't actually think much of it but, due to the fact that the Oliver Twins' previous games had sold so well, they would go ahead rather than cause disappointment. Initial sales were slow (not helped by some pretty poor box art that was created by a third party and did very little to portray the game) but it eventually caught on and started to sell well. Obviously, this would go on to spawn a raft of Dizzy games that would make the Oliver Twins a decent amount of money (think along the lines of a few 10's of thousands over time, so not earth-shatteringly huge sums). Immediately after the first Dizzy game, the Twins went on to work on BMX Simulator, Fruit Machine Simulator, Jet Ski Simulator and a few others you might be familiar with...
At the time they turned twenty, they had a steady stream of royalties coming in and had various successful titles behind them - which meant they also had a bit of money in the bank as well. They weren't the frivolous type and decided to buy a plot on a new build estate so they could get out of their parent's place and into their own home, which they would use to write games by converting a bedroom or two into a studio space. It cost them £112,000 in 1988 so I guess they weren't doing too badly...
I'll leave it there! LOLz!
Yes, those of us familiar with early home computers (and/or of a certain age) would have most likely come across a Dizzy game or two on one or more of the popular home computer formats of the time. The Dizzy games were incredibly popular and continued to remain so for many years. In fact, there still exists a strong fan base to this day and various remakes and new Dizzy games are doing the rounds (typically free to play, too).
Andrew and Philip started with their first computer in 1981 when their older brother bought a secondhand Sinclair ZX81 for 50 quid. They took it and started experimenting, largely creating simple games in BASIC (which was tough given the generally crap nature of the system and only having 1K of RAM). They had been well and truly bitten by the bug and so started looking at other systems, such as the BBC Micro and lesser-known Dragon 32. They took on jobs and errands in order to raise a bit of money and decided to buy the Dragon 32 in the end (with a bit of help from their parents) and started making games on that. Sadly, it didn't turn out to be a winning hardware platform in terms of popularity when it was competing against the likes of the C64, Spectrum and BBC Micro... They ended up getting a BBC Micro B a year or so later.
Around 1983 the Twins won a computer game competition and appeared on ITV's The Saturday Show, having designed and written a simple game called Strategy. The prize was actually a BBC Model B computer (which they already had) so they were able to swap it for a high-resolution monitor instead! Most people had no idea what such an item was and it took about 6-8 months to arrive, but it made their job easier in terms of writing future games. Talking of that game competition, they took the game a little further, tidied it up, and a company by the name of Acornsoft took an interest. They offered to buy the game for £1,200 (total) OR for 7.5% royalties on sales, but wanted it renamed - so it became "Gambit". They decided to chase the royalties but then had to suffer a wait of 12 months before Acornsoft finally published and released the game. Sadly, Acornsoft also decided to bundle another game with theirs hence their royalties were halved, too... although they were able to renegotiate a 5% figure in the end. Still, it was far from successful due to the delays, the incompetence of the publisher, and the fact it was written in BASIC (publishers were showing interest in better-performing games written in assembler/machine code). The upshot of this was that they received a measly £166.41 in royalties (and no more). To add insult to injury, the envelope that the cheque arrived in had the wrong postage hence the Twins had to pay 11p to cover the underpayment!
Around that time, early to mid 80's, they would also write some simple games for various lesser-known entities - versions of Bingo, word games, and similar. They would typically get paid £25-£100 quid for a game - i.e. not a lot. They also continued to write a few titles for Acornsoft but ultimately got dumped when their games didn't sell so well. The problem was that the Twins' games were typically sold via mail order and didn't get the big exposure that some others were getting, and their last project for Acornsoft only sold 5 copies total! They weren't to be deterred though.
Anyway, enough of that stuff for now otherwise I'll be typing all night...
Fast forward to 1986 and the Twins had a deal in place with their father... they wanted to write computer games, and their parents wanted to see them go to university. They were both due to study electrical engineering and even had paid scholarships in place. However, they persuaded their parents that a year out was the thing to do so they could focus on making a real go of writing computer games seriously, and their parents agreed. Their father said that, if they made more money in their first year than he earned in that same period, he would forget the idea of university altogether and support them in their video game development ambitions. Well, you can probably guess the outcome...
It was in 1986 that the Oliver Twins met the Darling brothers (David and Richard) at the then PCW show at Olympia. The Darlings were of a similar age to the Olivers and had been writing successful games for Mastertronic. However, the Darlings had a bit of money behind them and were looking to start publishing titles themselves, under the business name of Codemasters. Discussions took place at the booth at the show and the Olivers showed a game design to the Darlings for Super Robin Hood. They asked how much the Darlings would likely pay for such a game, to which they replied £10,000... quite a large sum for two late teens in 1986. They (stupidly) agreed to have the game written in a month(!) and the start of a working partnership under the Codemasters publishing brand was effectively born. At that point, Andrew and Philip were still working in their bedroom at their parents' house and on a single, shared Amstrad computer. In order to get the game done, they estimated they needed a 23-hour workday (with two breaks of half an hour to allow the Amstrad to cool down!) They worked shifts of 18 hours a day, seven days a week and ate whilst they worked. One would sleep whilst the other worked and, when both were awake, one would write code on paper whilst the other coded at the keyboard.
They hit the deadline at month's end and took it along to Codemasters, where they got a bit of a shock. That figure of £10,000 had suddenly become 13.5p per copy sold, which was a little disappointing for them. However, the Olivers signed on the dotted line and agreed to the terms and Super Robin Hood was released soon after. It sold well and went straight to number one within a couple or so weeks. The royalties flooded in and surpassed the 10k mark, and Codemasters decided to port the game to other formats - Spectrum and C64 - for which the Oliver Twins received an additional 5p per copy sold. Ultimately, that first game collaboration made Andrew and Philip a little over 20k. The Olivers' next game would be Ghost Hunters, which also went on to sell well... and then came other familiar games such as Grand Prix Simulator... which made them quite a bit of money and allowed them the opportunity to go out and buy their first car, a shiny new Honda Integra!
And then came Dizzy. The Darling Twins at Codemasters didn't actually think much of it but, due to the fact that the Oliver Twins' previous games had sold so well, they would go ahead rather than cause disappointment. Initial sales were slow (not helped by some pretty poor box art that was created by a third party and did very little to portray the game) but it eventually caught on and started to sell well. Obviously, this would go on to spawn a raft of Dizzy games that would make the Oliver Twins a decent amount of money (think along the lines of a few 10's of thousands over time, so not earth-shatteringly huge sums). Immediately after the first Dizzy game, the Twins went on to work on BMX Simulator, Fruit Machine Simulator, Jet Ski Simulator and a few others you might be familiar with...
At the time they turned twenty, they had a steady stream of royalties coming in and had various successful titles behind them - which meant they also had a bit of money in the bank as well. They weren't the frivolous type and decided to buy a plot on a new build estate so they could get out of their parent's place and into their own home, which they would use to write games by converting a bedroom or two into a studio space. It cost them £112,000 in 1988 so I guess they weren't doing too badly...
I'll leave it there! LOLz!
