Lemmings for DOS (1991) - MobyGames Not an American user? Description Your task is to rescue the Lemmings across 120 levels of fast-paced puzzling. These creatures simply walk blindly through the world in the hope of reaching safety at the end of the level - unfortunately these levels include steep drops, gaps in the ground, barriers and rivers amongst other hazards. You are in control not of any individual Lemming, but of a cross-hair, which can be moved over any of the Lemmings. Along the bottom are a selection of functions which can be assigned to a Lemming, including climbing, floating and bashing. You must click to select the appropriate function, then click on the Lemming to activate it. Each level has a different range of skills on offer, a different amount of Lemmings, and a different percentage target in order to progress. Trivia 666 level The original Lemmings had a strong edge of macabre imagery in it, perhaps to offset the excessively "cutesy" look and feel of the lemmings themselves.

This is particularly prevalent on the "Hell" levels on which the exit portal is a horned pig's head, and especially on level 14 of the "Tricky" difficulty rating (the level title is "MENACING!!") which contains several skeleton limbs hanging from what appears to be dripping blood, and a large skull with a snake crawling through its eye sockets. Probably most (in)famous of all, however, is level 21 on the "Tricky" difficulty rating, entitled "All the 6's........" and consisting entirely of a playfield which is shaped like the number 666. It also contains a total of 66 lemmings, requires 66% to be saved, provides 66 of each skill, and provides 6 minutes in which to finish. Like many pop culture references to the number 666, this was meant as a joke and wasn't intended as an overt reference to Satanism or anything else of that nature, but the matter was sensitive enough that the "Menacing" and 666 levels were removed from several versions of the game that were released for family-friendly consoles.

Another level cut from some versions was "A beast of a level" which may have been removed simply for fear that it was referencing the "Beast" associated with the number 666, although the level title actually references Psygnosis' earlier title Shadow of the Beast . A webpage by Mike Dailly (founder of DMA Design ) documenting the history of DMA explains that the 666 level originated when Mike wanted to make a 5-themed level, but he couldn't get the level to require 55% of the lemmings to be saved without changing the number of lemmings. Then, thinking of the other Hell levels in the game, he thought of 666 and opted to go with that. He also expresses surprise at how strong a reaction the level got, particularly since from his perspective, players are actually rescuing the lemmings from Hell into a better place. 1001 Video Games Lemmings appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott. Amiga Power survey This was the most popular choice when Amiga Power magazine asked a number of famous programmers which Amiga game they wish they'd written and why.

Archer MacLean was impressed by its cuteness and attention to detail, while Andy Beveridge said "It's refreshingly different, and fun too... and it's going to make lots of money, I'm sure" - other programmers echoed this final point. Apple IIGS version French programming team calling themselves, "Brutal Deluxe" did a 'unofficial' conversion for Apple IIGS computer in 1997, formally known as "Brutal Deluxe's LemminGS". Mainly based on Atari ST version and contains 10 of 92 levels are in the playable demo. Minimum 700Kb free RAM and System 6. Tool 35 (Midi Synth) part of System 6, 4Mb RAM, Accelerator card and hard drive is recommended. Arcade version An arcade coin-op version of Lemmings was prototyped by Data East (which mainly makes pinball equipment) in 1991, never to be released. It uses the same levels (occasionally edited to remove various things, more on that later), but has fewer levels. It is played with one trackball, one select button, and one start button for each of 2 players.

Some differences in this version include: The music is slower, the music quality is lower, there are some new songs, and the songs are apparently not finished (in most of the songs, some of the instruments do not play their parts of the song, and in a very few songs only the background rhythm is there and the other instruments do nothing) The game does not tell you what skills a lemming has when you point at it like most other versions. Lemmings with skills that are not instantly visible (floaters, climbers, etc.) have flashing clothes to set them apart. A high-pitched Lemming voice gives you hints and comments on your performance. This is apparently not entirely implemented, because it frequently tells you to blow Lemmings up for no good reason. The time limit in some levels is completely impossible, due to the slow walking speed of the Lemmings. However, if you run out of time, you can put in more quarters to buy more. Exploding lemmings just sit down and blow up, rather than walking around with a countdown.

Therefore, in many levels (notably "Now Use Blockers and Bombers"), the Blockers are available, and the Hint Voice tells you to use them, but they are not needed. Various references to "heaven" and "hell" were replaced with different things. The slight goriness of the game has been toned down a bit, and exploding Lemmings do not "splatter". The button animations are changed so that the debris and bricks in the Basher, Builder, Miner, and Digger match the color of the debris and bricks in the level you are on. Some level names are changed, including a level now named "The Steel Mines of Kessel" in an apparent reference to the planet Kessel in Star Wars. The lemmings occasionally go behind the exit when they should go in front. They still "jump" as if they are going in it, and they can be seen through parts of the exit. The "666" level is not playable, but it is in the game's data ROM.

Stored in a location in memory near it is an interesting bunch of text about a conversation between someone at Psygnosis and the VP of Data East relating to the 666 level, the hell references, the "Menacing" level, and an obstacle that appears to pull the skin off the Lemmings. Don't ask me why this is here. Silly programmers. There are a few levels on difficulty level "Mystery" that are completely new. They're incredibly buggy. Atari ST version The software controllable LED of the Atari ST disk drive was used in-game. It blinks when the three last building bricks are used by the bridge builder lemming. Copy protection At least one of the U.S. 3.5" floppy disk releases contained an interesting form of copy protection. In addition to the game randomly asking you on game start-up to insert the 3.5" floppy install disk to verify you have a legitimate copy, the install disk itself was "defective by design". Portions of the disk have an invalid file and/or cluster structure.

Running the disk through a disk checking program such as Windows Scandisk will show these errors, but they're all "by design", so it's important that you don't correct them using such a program. Even if you copied the disk using specialized disk copying programs, more often than not, the copy will not be accepted by the game when it asks you to insert the install disk. Heart attack In Watertown, New York, during the spring of 1997, a 78-year old man was hospitalized (in critical condition) due to a heart attack, which he suffered when he entered the basement for the first time of the furniture store he owned and was surprised to find hundreds and hundreds of 5-foot Lemmings cardboard cutouts staring at him. The creepy green-haired critters gave him such a shock that he keeled over and went into cardiac arrest. After hearing of this and recognizing the cutouts (referred to as "lifesize zombie cutouts" by the TV news) as Lemmings, Tony Gies asked both Psygnosis and DMA Design about the cutouts.

Neither of them had any records or memory of making the cutouts, and nobody knew how they got into the base ment of the store -- which this man had owned and used as a furniture store for about 20 years. Spooky. References The level 22 in the Fun difficulty setting, which is named as "A Beast of a Forest" was designed as a tribute to the Psygnosis' big action hit on the Amiga (where Lemmings was original created) - Shadow of the Beast. The graphics used in the level resemble the graphics of the first level of the Beast. This level is different from other levels in Lemmings in its use of music as well -- a MOD track taken directly from the "Shadow of the Beast" is played throughout the level while all other levels in Lemmings use FM music. As well as level 22 of Fun difficulty setting there are also Psygnosis tribute levels in the other three difficulty categories. Tricky 14 is a tribute to Menace , Taxing 15 is for Awesome and Mayhem 22 is for Shadow of the Beast II .

Terry Pratchett The author Terry Pratchett claimed that he was so addicted to the game that he forced himself to delete it from his hard drive and even wipe the original disks, as he was so worried about missing deadlines due to playing it too much. Version differences All ports contain the 120 standard levels from the Amiga version, with the following exceptions: The Amiga, Atari ST, SNES and Sega Genesis versions contain additional 20 2-player levels. The SNES version contains 5 extra levels. The Genesis version contains 60 of the standard levels and an additional 120 unique levels The Macintosh version of Lemmings contains a different Tricky 21 level, called "Going their separate ways". This level is much harder than the original "All the 6's". The Windows 95, Playstation and Gameboy versions all contain less levels than the original Amiga version. Commodore 64 version contains no 2-player levels and there are only 100 of original levels. There is also no level map in the bottom right corner of the screen and specific for "Lemmings" spoken expressions like "Let's go" and "Oh, no".

Awards May 1991 (Issue #00) - #2 in the "All Time Top 100 Amiga Games" Commodore Force December 1993 (Issue 13) – #79 “Readers' Top 100” Commodore Format March 1994 (Issue 42) Heaven – The Path to Righteousness: 20 Essential Games November 1994 (Issue 50) – #2 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games Computer Gaming World November 1992 (Issue #100) – Action Game of the Year October 1994 (Issue #123) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame November 1996 (15th Anniversary Issue) - #12 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) –#14 Funniest Computer Game GameStar (Germany) Issue 12/1999 - #35 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking Power Play Issue 02/1992 - Best Computer

 Game in 1991 Issue 02/1992 - Best Dexterity Game in 1991 Issue 02/1992 - Best Game Idea in 1991 Retro Gamer October 2004 (Issue #9) – #21 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote) ST Format August 1991 (Issue #8) – #9 Top Atari ST Classic Games (Editorial staff vote) January 1993 (issue #42) – #3 in '50 finest Atari ST games of all time' list A History of Psygnosis in 12 Games - IGN IGN A History of Psygnosis in 12 Games Share A History of Psygnosis in 12 Games Share.

By Colin Campbell Today’s announcement of the closure of Sony’s Liverpool studio , formerly known as Psygnosis, shuts the doors on one of the most influential publishing and development names in gaming. Psygnosis began life in the hot creative and commercial maelstrom of the UK games industry at the tail-end of the 1980s, when talented developers were moving on from 8-bit computers like the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 to significantly more powerful machines such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. The label gathered a huge following with its distinctive logo and graphically rich games from top-talent developers, often marketed in impressive packages. After a string of hits, the firm made the shift to consoles via an acquisition by Sony, helping to launch the original PlayStation with landmark titles like Wipeout and Colony Wars. It helped Sony with those successful consoles, PS2 and PSP. But along the way Psygnosis, renamed as SCE Studio Liverpool, was downgraded from publishing brand to development arm, focusing increasingly on the ever-decreasing circle of the franchise that made its name. So, here’s a highly subjective list of 12 games that tell the story of Psygnosis and of SCE Studios Liverpool.

Note, many of the games listed were available for multiple platforms. For the sake of brevity we have named the single platform where we believe the game had most impact. Shadow of the Beast - Amiga - 1989 When Psygnosis formed in the late 1980s, its main function was to gather and collect the best games for new home computers then being generated by those small indie teams with little or no access to the market. In those days, there was no Steam. All games had to be marketed through retail. The company’s founders earned a solid reputation for hard-nosed business and for an appreciation of artistic gaming. This was an era when plenty of cash-in games came to market with little or no merit. Shadow of the Beast from Reflections was a heavily-marketed side-scrolling platformer with lovely visuals, tingly music and sweet parallax scrolling that delighted the emerging Amiga generation. Lemmings - Amiga - 1991 DMA Design’s solid classic established Psygnosis as a major name in game publishing, and helped move the company forward from the excesses and failures of its progenitor, a 1980s company called Imagine that went puff due to mismanagement.

DMA had previously worked with Psygnosis on well-liked Amiga games like Blood Money and Menace. But Lemmings took standard platforming, turned it upside down, and shook the box vigorously. Players guided tiny lemmings from A to B negotiating hazards and solving puzzles on multiple levels, a precursor to the real-time strategy boom that was to follow. Lemmings is one of the defining games of the golden-age of British game design. Agony - Amiga - 1992 Psygnosis began life churning out graphically impressive games for Amiga and Atari ST, a factory system of talented artists welded together with fairly basic gameplay mechanics. Agony from Art & Magic was just one of these games, a lush two-dimensional side-scrolling shooter featuring an owl as the main protagonist. Strange piano-led soundtrack added to the feeling of artistry but, not unusually for the period, the shallow gameplay lacked staying power and is best-remembered as an example of early-90s atmospheric artistry. Wipeout - PlayStation - 1995 Few games illustrate the magic of PlayStation’s arrival like Wipeout, a hip-to-the-kids remix of multiple-layer sci-fi driving and electronic music.

The game has been reworked so many times it’s easy to forget that the simplicity of the original, all time-trial exercises and bonuses, as well as an absolute sense of gravity and space. Sony management, having smartly bought Psygnosis in order to get PlayStation off the ground, celebrated its win with night-club installations of the game. Wipeout became the company’s mascot for a generation of kids who had grown up with NES but didn’t want to grow out of games. Destruction Derby - PlayStation - 1995 This PlayStation 1 title came soon after the console’s launch in 1995, a Reflections-developed celebration of all the dumbest, most-fun moments in driving games, an absolute talisman of Sony’s single-minded drive to no-frills, knuckle-headed, mass-market appeal. It had racetracks, sure, but the great combat arena was where the auto-crunching action took place, the entire point being merely to crash into other cars and inflict as much damage as possible.

The result was a PS1-festoon of polygon-shards and crunched bodies, very much of its time, a tech-demo that lost its charm fairly quickly but nonetheless moved automotive game physics forward and made a lot of people happy, endlessly crashing cars. Discworld - PC - 1996 Voiced by Monty Python’s Eric Idle, here was an ambitious attempt to bring Terry Pratchett’s popular comic franchises to gaming. It was an unusual point-and-click adventure of graphical depth and humor, but steeped in tough puzzles. The backgrounds for this enormous world were all hand-drawn, once again a nod to Psygnosis as a brand that was all about visuals and experimentation. Colony Wars - PlayStation - 1997 Long before Mass Effect's multiple-ending space-epic, there was Colony Wars. Players engaged in 3D space-shooter missions which then affected how the game-world progressed. Graphically lush, the gameplay was interspersed with cutscenes and voice-overs which, while crude by today’s standards, wowed reviewers of the day. IGN’s Julian Rignall called it “the best PlayStation action game yet, bar none”.

The game inspired a trilogy, still fondly remembered today and was a central part of Psygnosis' best years during the PlayStation years, alongside shooter G-Police, and RC racer Rollcage, among others. Formula One 2001 - PlayStation 2 - 2001 After a decade of enormous growth and success on multiple platforms (Wipeout 64 was a notable example) the Psygnosis brand was retired as the company was folded into Sony‘s global network of game developers. Its Liverpool HQ was given the charmless name SCE Studio Liverpool. All this was part of a global reorganization in anticipation of the coming of PlayStation 2. SCE Liverpool’s first game for the new console was an okayish driving licence, Formula One 2001. It ended the era of the company as a wide-ranging publisher across multiple skills and brought in a decade when the studio focussed mostly on racing (many more annualized F1 games were to follow) and then racing-combat. In a way, it was the beginning of the end. Wipeout Fusion - PlayStation 2 - 2002 As PlayStation 2 began its incredible success-curve, demands grew for a new Wipeout game.

SCE Liverpool had moved on from the Psygnosis years and many of the original team had long gone. The ideas that had inspired that earlier generation were no longer seen as relevant. In any case, Wipeout had been iterated so many times, that it had begun to feel familiar and old. This was not a time for nostalgia, but of reinvention. The soundtrack lacked that vim of the 1990s original, but visually the game offered a great deal more variety, more futurescape deserts and jungles than holographic LSD rollercoasters. IGN reviewer Rick Sanchez wrote that, despite initial misgiving at the new direction, he found it to be one of the most fun games available for the new console. Wipeout Pure - PSP - 2005 As with the original PlayStation, the studio gave Sony something to crow about for the launch of PSP. Wipeout Pure was just as stylish, slick and beguiling as the PSP itself, a demonstration of the machine’s graphical supremacy over its rivals and of Sony’s dominance over interactive entertainment. 2005 was the year that development began on another portable device that could play games, the iPhone.

Wipeout HD - PlayStation 3 - 2008 Throughout the last decade, SCE Liverpool cranked out very decent WipeOut games for PSP including Wipeout Pure and Wipeout Pulse. This was a PS3 downloadable celebration of those games and of the franchise, offering the same tracks at 60 frames-per-second in high-definition. It was a demonstration of the craft that the team at SCE Liverpool was capable of producing, a genuinely exciting, impressive, compelling production that made the hardware sing, all marks of the Psygnosis heritage. The game spawned an equally impressive expansion, Fury, that offered new modes and multiplayer bug fixes. Wipeout 2048 - Vita - 2012 Psygnosis (Psygnosis Ltd) Psygnosis Ltd Exports of Liverpool include The Beatles, a popular music combo, Shergar, a successful racehorse and Psygnosis, a computer games company of some note. Founded in 1984, Psygnosis pursued a two pronged strategy of producing graphically excellent games and taking young computer programmers under their wing. Both approaches produced mixed results. Shadow of the Beast was an intriguing platformer with ground breaking graphics.

Theatre of Death was a poor strategy simulation that suffered from being released at the same time as Sensible Software's much better Cannon Fodder. In 1991 Psygnosis published a game by DMA Design which put them both on the gaming map for ever. Lemmings was the first of the so called "save 'em up" type of games, where the player has to guide as many little creatures to the level exit as possible, while helping them to avoid the certain death that surrounds them. Lemmings spawned many sequels on many, many platforms. When Psygnosis was acquired by the Sony Corporation in 1993, the company moved into a new phase of development and expansion. The company continued to support other platforms, including the Amiga, but it was clear where Sony's intentions lie; with the release of the Playstation, games for the new platform flew out of the Psygnosis studios, which began sprouting up around the UK and other countries. Destruction Derby and, most significantly, Wipeout helped the new platform to gather the respect it needed to break into the highly competitive console market.

Psygnosis continued to produce top selling titles for the Playstation, including hits such as G-Police, Colony Wars, and the inevitable Wipeout sequels, Wipeout 2097 and Wip3out keeping Psygnosis at the top of the computer games tree. The end of Psygnosis came when, in 1999, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) completely absorbed the company. Psygnosis' head office in Liverpool and studios in Stroud, Camden and Leeds were rebranded as Sony Studio Liverpool, Stroud, Camden and Leeds, with other studios being closed. Software Highlights from Credited Titles Psygnosis's first work that SPOnG is aware of is the 1985 title, "Brattacas" (ST).

The company has been involved titles released on the PS3, PC, PS2, Power Mac, PSP, PlayStation, N64, Game Boy, Saturn, Sega Megadrive, SNES, Amiga, Amiga AGA, CD32, ST, 3DO, FM Towns, NEC PC Engine, Sega MegaCD, Sega Master System, NES, C64, Spectrum 48K, Sinclair Spectrum 128K, BBC/Electron and Amstrad CPC. Of these, "Wipeout 64" (N64) and "Lemmings" (PC) have been best selling titles. The company's most recent involvement was on the 2006 release "Key of Heaven" (PSP). Know something we don't? Let us know! If you work for Psygnosis, register now to manage this listing. Lemmings | Lemmings Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Since the original lemmings game, many clones have been made. Some of the most widely used are Lemmix , Lemmini , and Tundra , and L++ though there are more listed on The Lemmings Archive . Some clones are capable of running custom levels.

The most well known level editors for the original Lemmings game are LemEdit and Lemmix , both of which can also edit Oh No! More Lemmings . The level editor the original developers used is still around on a floppy disk owned by one of the developers, although they cannot get their computer to read the disk, so there is currently no level editor for the Amiga version of Lemmings. While custom levels can be played by the original game or Oh No! More Lemmings, the levels can sometimes be out of order, and in the case of the original game the file ODDTABLE.DAT makes things difficult. These players include Lemmix's Level Editor, the Lemmix Player (though it isn't obvious how to run lemmingseo2 custom levels through), Lemmini, Cheapo Copycat Lemmings , which has a level editor, although its level format is not compatible with any other player, so original levels or custom levels made with one of the level editors other than Cheapo's won't work, and Customized Lemmings , commonly called CustLemm. There is also a hack of the original lemmings.exe file that runs the levels in order.

The Ghosts of Christmas Games Past | PCWorld The Ghosts of Christmas Games Past By Benj Edwards , PCWorld Dec 20, 2009 5:00 PM 1 of 13 See larger image The Christmas Games of Yesteryear Of the tens of thousands of video and computer games released since the 1970s, few have featured Christmas themes. That's surprising considering that the holiday is an insanely popular topic in other forms of media (especially movies--the number of Christmas-themed films could probably fill the Grand Canyon). Here are twelve video and computer games, all released more than ten years ago, that dared to buck the trend. Some failed, some succeeded, but all tried to deliver holiday cheer with Santa, sleighs, elves, evil snowmen, flying turkey helicopters, and other beloved symbols of Christmas. Many were released on more than one platform; whenever possible, I've included the cover art for all of the versions. Some of the games are still available, and I've given links to the ones you can download online. Our list of Christmas games is not exhaustive, though, so if you have a favorite that we left out, please share it in the comments.

If you're interested in retro gaming, check out these stories, too: See larger image Santa Claus no Takarabako Data East published this obscure game (whose title roughly translates to "Santa Claus's Toy Box") solely in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, a disk-drive add-on for the Japanese NES. This game serves as a digital Christmas card, wherein the user can type a custom message that scrolls across the screen under an image of an idyllic snow-covered house. When that gets boring, the player can choose from a selection of gambling games such as roulette and slots. If your family likes to gamble on Christmas, this game is for you. Data East, 1987 See larger image The Official Father Christmas In this somewhat ambitious title, Santa Claus must first collect pieces of his sleigh in his house while avoiding his elves, who, bizarrely, make Santa drop what he has found if they touch him. Once the sleigh is assembled, Santa must fill it with toys in another scene where the playthings fall from the sky in his "Grotto." Then it's off to deliver the gifts by dropping them into children's houses.

Santa must accomplish all of this before the sun rises, or those precocious elves take over and make him look bad by delivering all the toys for him. If you must play this title, try to track down the C64 version; it features the best graphics. Alternative Software Ltd., 1989 See larger image Xmas/Holiday Lemmings In 1991 and 1992, Psygnosis released two four-level demo versions of its popular Lemmings puzzle game with a Christmas theme, both entitled Xmas Lemmings. The player must guide the Lemmings (wearing Santa hats) over snowy, Christmasy terrain to reach a goal safely. In 1993 and 1994, Psygnosis released two follow-ups, called Holiday Lemmings, made in a similar vein. You can download the freely distributable Xmas Lemmings games ( 1991 and 1992 ), as well as a demo version of Holiday Lemmings 1993 , and play them on an old DOS PC or through an emulator such as DOSBox .

Psygnosis Limited, 1991-1994 See larger image Elf Bowling We end our jaunt through Christmas gaming history with a silly Christmas classic that set the Internet aflame ten years ago. In Elf Bowling--a self-contained, freely distributable game for Windows--the player controls a disgruntled Santa Claus as he mows down his elf workers (who function as pins) with a bowling ball. In turn, the elves hurl high-pitched insults at Santa, making their eventual collapse at the hands of a bowling ball all the more satisfying. Though the game is no longer distributed by its creator, you can download and play Elf Bowling . It runs on Windows 95 or later. Happy holidays, everybody! NStorm, 1999 Psygnosis Limited - MobyGames Psygnosis Limited Links Overview Psygnosis was a British video game developer and publisher. The company was founded in Liverpool in 1984 from the ashes of Imagine , and initially developed games (mostly in the action genre) for Amiga and Atari ST.

After their initial success with their early games, such as Brataccas , Psygnosis' biggest hit came with Lemmings , released in 1991 and spawned many sequels. This success led to the acquisition of the company by Sony Corp. on May 23, 1993. After the acquisition, in early 1995, Psygnosis retreated from the Amiga market, and just after several months, in September 1995, Psygnosis released WipeOut . WipeOut was Psygnosis' second biggest hit, after Lemmings. Like Lemmings, WipeOut has spawned many sequels. Just after WipeOut was released, in late 1995, Psygnosis abandoned development on 16-bit platforms, leaving some games, like the Genesis port of Bill's Tomato Game , unreleased. Psygnosis also operated two labels: Psyclapse and Sizzlers . Psyclapse was a publishing label, and Sizzlers was a budget label, responsible for re-releasing old Psygnosis games. Both labels disappeared in the early 90's.

The last of its subsidiaries was a studio, called Wheelhaus , closed in 1999-2000. In late 1998, Eidos Interactive bought Psygnosis' European operations. Psygnosis' US operations were folded into Sony's own development outfit, 989 Studios. Finally, in 2000, Psygnosis (as a Sony brand) abandoned the PC game market for good, with all games that in development at the time were either cancelled, moved to PlayStation, or licensed to different publishers. All US studios closed. The UK studios were absorbed by SCEE, renamed SCE Studio Liverpool and became part of the SCE Worldwide Studios .

The last game released under Psygnosis name and logo was Team Buddies , developed by Studio Camden Gamasutra - Playing Catch Up: Traveller's Tales' Jon Burton November 9, 2006 Playing Catch Up: Traveller's Tales' Jon Burton Today's Playing Catch-Up, a weekly column that dares to speak to notable video game industry figures about their celebrated pasts and promising futures, speaks to Jon Burton, co-founder of UK independent software house Traveller.s Tales and designer on Puggsy and the Lego Star Wars series, amongst others. Various Early Thingumys Burton developed an interest in computers back in the early .80s, through the 8-bit Commodore VIC-20. .My family was visiting my uncle and he had a VIC-20,. he explains. .I typed in one of the BASIC programs from the back of the manual, and the computer made the sound of a UFO landing. I was hooked.... After getting his hands on a Sinclair Spectrum, Burton decided that his goal was to make a career out of making games. .I spent most of my free time .geeking. away writing endless games, first in BASIC, the FORTH, and then in assembler,. he says.

.I finished a few games in assembler on the Spectrum and sent them to a budget publisher called Firebird, but none were accepted.. Amongst the titles he created were Turbo 2, which Burton describes as a .side scrolling driving-platformer written in FORTH., Gup, a platform game, Daedulus, a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, and Thingumy, which he explains was like .Lemmings with one character instead of 100s.. .Years ahead of its time, etc,. Burton adds. Tales Of Psygnosis Things really began to change after Burton bought a Commodore Amiga in the mid .80s, and became interested in the system.s burgeoning demo-scene, where programmers and artists would create flashy animated exhibitions of the computer.s abilities. They were often, though not exclusively, created by hacking groups, and used to introduce or bookend cracked games, in order to display the group.s skill. .I started to write a few of my own,. Burton says. .After a few months I met up with a guy who was a freelance graphic artist and we decide to write a game.

We produced a basic first pass level of the game and took it to [UK based .80s publishing powerhouse] Psygnosis, mainly just for some guidance. To our surprise, they offered to publish it.. Burton continued work on the game with graphic artist Andy Ingram under the Traveller.s Tales name, and eventually finished the game, Leander, 18 months later. .I wrote a lot of it while finishing my work placement and degree at Liverpool,. he explains. .It was a lot of fun writing the game, but I don.t really have much fondness for it as such. Not sure why. It was technically and artistically fantastic for the time, but the gameplay was pretty generic and repetitive.. The Shadow of the Beast-esque hack .n. slash game was released on the Amiga in 1991, and proved popular enough to receive a port to the Sega Mega Drive the next year. It also established Traveller.s Tales as a developer of note within the British scene, something Burton notes as having happened .almost by accident, really.. .We got in at the right time,. he muses. .The Amiga gave us a door in before the consoles took hold.

Once we were working with Psygnosis, PCs, dev-systems and so on were provided by them.. The Trouble With Training Traveller.s Tales next game also had its roots in the Amiga demo-scene. The demo Puggs in Space by the group Dionysus had impressed the management at Psygnosis so much that they were asked to create a game based around the character; a short, red alien named Puggsy. However, the task proved too much for the group, who pulled out of the project. .I think it was a bit beyond the guys who created the demo,. recalls Burton. .So in the end, Psygnosis asked us if we could create a game using the character. The only thing really retained from the demo was the design of the main character. However, he was red in the demo and we changed him to orange as the consoles would suffer from colour bleed from the colour red.. Puggsy, as released, was a puzzle platformer that featured object physics well ahead of its time. .I loved Super Mario World on the SNES and loved the fact you could pick up and thrown the springs and the turtles. I though there was loads of potential with taking that a lot further,.

says Burton of the inspiration for the physics. .So I set out to try and create a Super Mario World type game, but with all the puzzles being based on lots of physics objects and them all having loads of different properties like buoyancy, weight, friction etc.. Puggsy was released on Amiga and Mega Drive in 1993 to mostly positive reviews, but sold poorly. Burton puts this down to the title.s misleading training levels, which he suggests gave the player the impression that the game was a basic platformer, of which there was an enormous amount at the time. .The training levels at the start were added very late in the day in response to publisher input, and the result was that a quick play on the game would give the impression of a basic platformer, when in fact 4 or 5 levels in - out of 69 levels - is where we originally wanted the player to start,. he notes. .It was just deemed too complicated for beginners, so the training was added.. Out Of The Back-Bedroom Following that, Burton and team worked on the SNES and Mega Drive versions of Bram Stoker.s Dracula, which allowed the company to move forward yet again in terms of professionalism and expansion.

.Psygnosis was in the process of being bought by Sony and Bram Stoker.s Dracula was a film created by Sony,. he explains. .We got a reasonable advance for the game and so we could get an office and start hiring up people. Bram Stoker.s Dracula really paid to get us working at a more professional level. Up until then it had literally been 'back-bedroom' stuff.. Though the game received only average reviews, Traveller.s Tales clearly impressed higher ups at Sony, who contacted the company in regards another license they had recently acquired. .Sony Imagesoft had pitched an idea to Disney for a Mickey Mouse game,. says Burton, .originally to tie in with his 65th birthday and penned by Dave Jaffe - bless him! The problem was that the pitch to Disney was hugely ambitious and had no basis in the reality of what technology could achieve.. .We created a couple of demo levels for Disney which they thought were running on the Mega CD but actually were just running on a basic Mega Drive,. he continues. .This impressed them so much that we got to make the game for them.

Once we had gained creative control of the design of the game and could make what was possible on the system, we ended up with what I think is one of our best games to date.. The creative control afforded to the company was for Mickey Mania, in fact, far beyond anything that had been allowed for previous Disney games, notes Burton. .One cool thing is that if you lost a life, a short sequence would play showing Mickey holding up a lily and dying. That seemed fine at the time, but we later learned that that is the only time that Mickey Mouse has been depicted as dead! 'We Killed Mickey Mouse' . maybe we should get t-shirts made.. .Ask me about working with Jaffe some time.... he adds, tantalisingly. The title was released for Mega Drive and SNES in late 1994, with an expanded version released for the Mega CD shortly after. Burton comments that the CD format offered the company the chance to push their games further. .We loved technology and trying to achieve things on the hardware that no-one else could.

On the Mega Drive we had full screen rotation and scaling, particle systems, 2D physics, 4096 colour displays, and a full screen Wolfenstein engine at 30fps. The Mega CD gave us more hardware to play with and we had one of the most advanced video play back engines of the time. Eurocom even licensed it from us for Mortal Kombat.. Traveller.s Tales continued their relationship with Disney the next year, working through the Buena Vista Games publishing arm of the company on Toy Story for the 16-bit consoles. .I think we understand how Disney works, and they trust us to get the games done to a high standard and on time,. Burton explains of their continuing relationship. .They need the product in the marketplace on time, and we.ve never let them - or anyone else - down. I think my favourite Disney license to date has been the Toy Story series, although [ The Chronicles of] Narnia [in 2005] was very interesting to work on. The first Toy Story game was the first game in history to launch day-in-date with a movie..

Sonic Speed 1995 saw the PlayStation and Sega Saturn released in Europe and the US, and Burton became interested in working with the new technology as soon as possible. However, it would be another year before the company was able to move on from 16-bit, due to being offered their biggest license yet. .Sega approached us and said they wanted us to create a new Mega Drive game,. Burton says. .We said that we didn.t want to work on the last generation of machines anymore. They said that the game they wanted us to work on was Sonic. We told them how much we loved working on the last generation of machines!. Sonic 3D: Flickies. Island was released in late 1996, and was one of the last titles for the aging machine. While this meant it was competing with not only the two 32-bit machine, but also the recently released Nintendo 64, Burton used that chance to show off the company.s knowledge of the console. .Sega supplied the game design and level layouts, so we implemented the gameplay, created the technology to run that kind of game on a Mega Drive and created the rendered graphic style and so on,. he recalls.

.The engine that ran that game used every trick in the book and was the culmination of everything we had learned on the 16-bit consoles. The animations was decompressed in real-time, the backgrounds were streamed from ROM, and the game even had a 13 second full screen rendered intro FMV, running off cartridge!. .The only drawback was that the Mega Drive couldn.t scroll the screen fast enough in pseudo-3D to give the truly sonic-speeds, which I think was one of the criticisms of the game,. he admits. Nonetheless, the game received positive reviews, and Burton notes that Sega was .very happy. with the company.s efforts. Sonic 3D was also ported, just seven weeks later, to the Saturn, in order to make up for Sega.s cancellation of the US produced Sonic X-treme, which had been intended for release on the console. This cancellation also pushed Traveller.s Tales into the development of another Sonic game for the console . the racing title Sonic R. .Sonic R was actually a Formula One game for the Sega Saturn,. reveals Burton. .It took six months from start to finish [to convert the game into a Sonic title], hence the low number of tracks..

An Independent Necessity Following that, Traveller.s Tales began working with Disney once more, first on A Bug.s Life, which was published by Sony, then on a series of Toy Story related titles published by Activision. Burton notes that while working with different publishers is undoubtedly a necessity for an independent developer, it.s not without its problems. .Each publisher has its own methods and procedures and that takes time to get used to, and can be incredibly frustrating,. he comments, adding the time spent on the Sonic titles illustrated .how useful it was working with a company like Sega who understood games.. This became even more clear in 2001, when the company worked with Universal Interactive for Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. .[It] was meant to be designed by Mark Cerny, who designed all the others, and published by Sony,. says Burton. .Vivendi/Universal fell out with them and we had to go from a free roaming game to a standard Crash game with a reduced time-line - 12 months - and having to design the game ourselves from scratch..

A Haven For Mercenaries In comparison to previous games in the series, The Wrath of Cortex fared averagely sales-wise, and was widely criticised for adding nothing new to the series. Burton moved on to a new title, Haven: Call of the King, a genre spanning game he describes as .a very personal project.. .I programmed the main gameplay, movement, pickups, and camera, designed the whole game, art directed, wrote the story, etc.. he notes. .I wanted to make a game like Haven ever since I played Mercenary, an old wire-frame game on the Amiga,. he continues. .As a player, I loved the slow reveal of the size of the world and being able to gradually break out of the traditional bounds expected in games. Playing Haven starts you in a village with basic platform gameplay. As you progress you get to ride across a fractal landscape, get a speed boat, then a quad bike, then a sailing boat, then a plane, and eventually a spaceship. Each step allows you to realise you could explore more and more of the game world.

You could literally take off in a space ship from a level, fly around the whole fractal planet or off into space to another planet and land by a castle on another world and run off into the dungeons.. .Oblivion kind of touches on what we did, but we literally were on another planet, and that was on a PS2. However, that proved to be Haven.s undoing. Because the first hour was basically a platform game people would play the game and right it off as another platformer,. he notes, adding that .this was a lesson we singularly failed to learn. from the experience with Puggsy 10 years earlier. .That is how games playing has changed since Mercenary,. he muses. .You used to play a game for hours and discover everything, now games have to hit you with everything in the first hour or you won.t buy it, or journalists who don.t have time to play for much longer, just write it off.. However, despite the poor sales, the game remains a very special project for Burton, not simply because of the time and effort he invested in it, but because of the game.s deeper meaning. .The game storyline was written to be an allegory of the Christian Gospel,. he explains.

.As a Christian, I have always wanted to try and create a 'Christian' game, but that is incredibly difficult as the whole basis of Christianity is for you to give your life to Jesus, and trust and pray to God for help and guidance. That doesn.t make for the best gameplay. Can you imagine .Press X now to let God finish the level for you.?. .In games, you want to be the hero, and Christianity is all about humility, which is the opposite of you being the hero,. he continues. .However, C.S. Lewis wrote a popular story which was an allegory of the Gospel, called The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. He created a compelling story with pro-active characters, that also had a gospel message.. .So that.s what I tried to do with Haven. The good guy was called Athelion (a The-Lion?), the bad guy was called Vetch (Witch?), the traitor who caused the world.s downfall was called Dasis (Ju-.Das Is.-cariot), and so on. There are loads of things like this in the game. The only problem was, the game ends with a cliff-hanger ending paralleling the Crucifixion.

As no sequel was ever made, there was no .after 3 days.. scene and so the full story was never told.. .However,. Burton adds, .for the eagle eyed Christian game players, Puggsy had a room with a bible verse in huge letters and Sonic R had the Christian Ichthus - fish symbol, like on the back of cars - above the houses on the first track.. Building Brick By Brick Following another Disney license, this time for THQ, and a more successful return to the Crash franchise, Traveller.s Tales began work on the Lego Star Wars license. The company began the game under the guidance of Lego Interactive, until Lego Group decided to move out of the video game business. .The key management people at Lego Interactive started a small publishing company, then called Giant Interactive, to produce the game,. says Burton. .That company had the exclusive rights to Lego interactively. As I saw how well the game was turning out, I could see the potential of the Lego rights moving forward. After lots of discussions we realised that we could work very well with Giant Interactive and a developer driven publisher could be a very nimble and effective organization. So we bought Giant Interactive and it.s working out pretty well!.

The title was released at the beginning of 2005 to very positive reviews, and quickly went on to top sales charts around the world. .We knew we were onto something with Lego Star Wars, but we didn.t know if everyone else would .get. it,. recalls Burton. .It was great when we realised that we had managed to bridge the kids/adults gap with a title that appealed equally to both.. The team immediately began work on a second game, based on the original trilogy of movies. One of Burton.s main aims was to improve from the first title, by taking on board criticism levelled at the game. .We definitely feel we learnt from the criticism,. he notes. .The second game was much bigger, and the vehicle levels were a lot more fun and easy for kids to play.. Proof that the goal was met came in the form of a British Academy Video Games Award for gameplay for Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, a feeling Burton describes as .unbelievable.. .We spent the rest of the night periodically pointing to the bronze award in the middle of our table and shouting in disbelief .We won a BAFTA!.. he laughs.

Travelling Forward With the company about to release Bionicle Heroes, as well as having revealed that they will be working on a Lego Batman title, the future seems positive for Traveller.s Tales. Burton puts this down to the company.s reputation for .producing good games, on time, on budget., as well as their established position within the industry, .We are big enough and successful enough not to need development advances, which allows us more control of exactly how a game is made giving us more chance of it being as good as it can be in the time available,. he explains. .A lot of developers have to make endless changes often at the whim of publishers who think they know better or they don.t get paid. If we don.t agree with the changes, we can just push on making the game we feel is right, and the publisher can pay us when it.s finished. That.s not to say we don.t listen to publishers, we just don.t have to make obviously unnecessary changes just to massage the ego of a high up publisher .suit... .We are obviously a successful developer and that remains our core business,. continues.

.We have just acquired a small studio, which gives us a bit more capacity, but I think we will stay at 4-5 teams in total, as the number of people required to create games now is getting a little silly, and we don.t want to end up expanding into an uncontrollable mess.. Burton also notes that solid plans for the company to expand their publishing business exist, and that he is interested in focusing on that in years to come. .As distribution goes on-line, the publishing side of the company will gain strength. At the moment we have to partner with other publishers for distribution, which dilutes our brand.. .We are also diversifying into children.s TV a little, as it is a demographic that we understand, and it will give us control over the IP.s we create,. he adds. .Ultimately,. he concludes, .I guess we want to be the most successful independent developer in the world, and as we will have sold over 40 million games next year, that target looks achievable. Each thing we tackle brings new challenges and new experiences. And I truly believe this has just been the first step..

Question: A lastingly popular game released in 1991 by Psygnosis was called what?
Answer: Lemmings