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Desert Island Retro

Who was your favourite software studio?


Pook
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The 8-Bit era gave birth to many great software studios, many only lasted only a few years, some crossed over to the 16-bit era and a few still survive today under various guises. But who was you favourite?

I reckon in a poll the masses would chose 'Ultimate' and that's a great shout as they made some seminal original titles. There were powerhouses like 'Ocean' & 'US Gold' who churned out some good titles and arcade ports but were tainted with terrible franchised titles. Even Codemasters were massive in maintaining the 8-bit era into the budget market.

I used to enjoy work from smaller outlets that made some great titles, in that camp I'd include.. Software Projects, DK'Tronics, Microsphere, Gargoyle Games, Melbourne House, Beyond, Durell, Micromega, Hewson, Odin, Elite, and there's probably more.

But for me the winner has to be 'Vortex'.  I was amazed at not only the 3D but the speed and fluidity of it. Great titles like TLL, Cyclone & Alien Encounter were regularly played on my speccy.

 

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Edited by Pook

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That is a terrible question - but a great one as there is so much choice.

It feels like every game has a history that is tired into company x or y for a reason.  I would like to cheat and give the top two as depending on certain parts of my life, they are interchangable.

1) Quicksilva for the games you can see here below...

IMG_4654.thumb.JPG.0baae56d8656d8dbbff7757f0d7c10f1.JPG

2) Beyond for the more adult type games they made such as Lords of Midnight, Psytron and Shadowfire.

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11 hours ago, A:E said:

Ultimate, TheEdge, Hewson, Odin

SabreWulf, Fairlight, Cybernoid, Robin of the Wood

0h I forgot about the edge, what a great game Brian bloodaxe was, loved the way it pretended to crash on load and asked you to blow gently on the keyboard, great python soundtrack too.

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2 hours ago, Marlon36 said:

I'm going to go for the easy option and will say Ocean. Well, they did make Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Match Day, Head Over Heels and my fav The Great Escape. 😃

The Great Escape.

That game annoyed the hell out of me.  The first session when I owned it, I got really far - surprisingly far and too far what you should have got for a gameplay < 10 goes.

Then it was game over...

...after that point I was never able to replicate the luck I had in that game on the early session and I was never able to progress any decent length into it.  I am going to have to pick that up and give that ago again ! :)

Again like so many others of this era - so much gameplay in so little memory.

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On 03/11/2018 at 22:52, Pook said:

0h I forgot about the edge, what a great game Brian bloodaxe was, loved the way it pretended to crash on load and asked you to blow gently on the keyboard, great python soundtrack too.

You have to wonder on this one - what were the programmers smoking when they made this.

I think that was by Edge.  It was always disapointing that any of their later titles never lived up to the madness of this little one.

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Bobby Bearing was an excellent game released by The Edge.  I never really played Inside Outing, I had my C64 by then but by 1988 I wasn’t playing computer games on a regular basis.  In 1989 I got my Amiga, I didn’t play a great deal of games on that to be honest, I was really into music creation and started using Noise Tracker, got one of those sampler carts and this is what I mainly used my Amiga for, this and Deluxe Paint. 

J

 

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  • 1 month later...

Yeah Mpu5, Mastertronic................although they did put out some shite, Quest For The Golden Eggcup?  Which arse wrote that?.............

:)

Seriously though, some good names mentioned.  I'm pretty much the same as Pook, I loved all the main ones Ultimate, Ocean etc, but liked the smaller ones, Odin, Vortex, CRL and DK Tronics.

Talking of which, just played and completed Zombie Zombie, and 35 years on, the dual channel beep music, still has an edge to it.  Slightly off key, works really well.

NQ.

 

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Slighty biased on this one as I did do some work for them but Martech produced a few decent games (check the high score table on Geoff Capes Strongman on the Spectrum :) ). But removing the rose tinted glasses I would have to say Ocean/Imagine for some of the best arcade conversions out there

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  • 1 year later...

Saw this pop up again and thought I'd ask myself the same question a year or so on...

...pleased to say it was still Quicksilva.

Strangely my second choice was actually different this time and I think it comes from playing the ZX Spectrum Next a bit.

Now that is Vortex who did Cyclone and TLL as per @Pook and his picture above.

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  • 3 months later...

I don't normally like to necropost but I love the idea of this thread.

My favourite studio was definitely Ultimate.

However, the most important were probably J K Greye Software and CDS Micro Systems who were the good folks behind 3D Monster Maze and Castle Adventure respectively on the ZX81. Why, because they opened the eyes of a 10 year old Savage to how amazing computers are if you can program them. Needless to say this has served me well for nearly 40 years :)

 

S

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3D Monster Maze could well be the best use of a computers hardware of all time. 

Nightmare Park my favourite ZX81 game.  With Football Manager a close second. 

Ultimate on the Spectrum was a must. On the C64 no no and no again. 

CRL was another who produced great Spectrum games. 

I like Rainbow Arts on the Amiga and Microprose. 

 

 

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Sensible Software and Bitmap Bros.

Speaking of Snooker games above I always remember Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker which was coded solely by Archer Maclean, who also coded International Karate and IK+ - that guy is a genius both for the physics engine he created for Jimmy White's and particularly for how he coded the third player on IK+ on C64.

We had some amazing creative and genius talent that was 'homebrewed' through the 8-bit and 16-bit days many of whom went on to create games of this generation now and for many of them their genius was developed  through pushing the hardware to do things which did not seem possible, many of them had origins in the demo scene which they used to create these amazing feats of code and to compete against others to push the envelope.

I really struggle to see how creative genius can push the limits in the same way in the era we now live in; instead you hear of disgruntled developers who are being told to work increasingly longer hours to crunch on the latest and greatest game which is trying to provide even more photo realism and complicated mechanics. I feel that we have pushed too far now and this is why games with pixel graphics and simpler gameplay are proving to be more popular. 

Bring back the bedroom coders, them were the days !

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