Martyn Brown (Team 17) Interview

[rothers]

I think it's a retro looking game in the graphical style of Jet Set Radio etc.

[DisasterIncarna]

maybe targeted at low end crappy gfx vr? like standalone headsets like the abominations facebook make?

[TCD]

Why Superfrog matters: [ Show youtube player ]

Skip to 10:24 because time stamps don't work.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by TCD

Why Superfrog matters: [ Show youtube player ]

Skip to 10:24 because time stamps don't work.

You’re taking this piss, surely?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

You’re taking this piss, surely?

No.

[gimbal]

If only you wouldn't go into a lengthy stun cycle when you get hit, it'd probably be among my favorites because I do love me some secret hunting games. But that one poor design choice really breaks the game for me. I can forgive the floaty feedback and the odd method of attack. Uninteresting looking levels after the forest ones would be a secondary problem that is hard to get over for me, it's hard to keep motivated to play.

[skan]

Funny, I think Superfrog is one of the best games ever on Amiga. Enjoyable and well put together, a nice sum of its parts and damn good technically.

I never got all the hate really, but I suppose it's a matter of tastes and perspectives. Peace.

[gimbal]

I never get why people blow up distaste to "hate". It's one of those words that should be used extremely rarely.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by gimbal

If only you wouldn't go into a lengthy stun cycle when you get hit, it'd probably be among my favorites because I do love me some secret hunting games. But that one poor design choice really breaks the game for me. I can forgive the floaty feedback and the odd method of attack. Uninteresting looking levels after the forest ones would be a secondary problem that is hard to get over for me, it's hard to keep motivated to play.

Sleepwalker was irritating for similar reasons, if you were near an edge and you fell off, it would do this animation you couldn't stop, just such frustrating game design.

[skan]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I never get why people blow up distaste to "hate". It's one of those words that should be used extremely rarely.

Mine was a generic consideration, don't take it personal. And you can see yourself there's a lot of "hate" in that regard when it comes to SF. Anyway, whatever.

[gimbal]

Well, I don't get what all the hype is about then.

See? It just isn't nice to make sweeping statements like that. I'd rather forgo such lingo and respectfully disagree instead, it is so much more dignified. And fun.

[tarr]

Team 17's games may not be great in terms of gameplay, but they showed what an Amiga could do if coded properly: smooth scrolling, overscan, great 32 colours graphics, great sounds, no flickering or slow downs, etc...

Not many other teams coded the Amiga properly, except for Thalion, Factor 5, Magnetic Fields and few others. Surely Core Design games were never that good in terms of using the hardware, even if Wolfchild and Hemidall were great Games.

[Adropac2]

Originally Posted by tarr

Team 17's games may not be great in terms of gameplay, but they showed what an Amiga could do if coded properly: smooth scrolling, overscan, great 32 colours graphics, great sounds, no flickering or slow downs, etc...

Not many other teams coded the Amiga properly, except for Thalion, Factor 5, Magnetic Fields and few others. Surely Core Design games were never that good in terms of using the hardware, even if Wolfchild and Hemidall were great Games.

I think it takes us back to the concept that Amiga although capable of some very nice things in it's own way which it proved often enough, when it came to it, it was mostly home to bedroom home grown experiences. I personally love the Amiga's flavour of games as they had to be but the way in which they came to be was often different than that of a lot console games

The very best of console platformers like Mario were literally head and shoulders above even most platformers on the same console anyway but certainly anything the Amiga had to offer. And there are extra factors too like just the one button and I think you can to some extent include better suited hardware but really the Amiga wasn't ever likely to receive anything too remarkable because it was a different class of designer for the most that worked on these games. Of my favourite games on the Amiga though I know the experience in unique to the Amiga alone which is why I think we all love these times and the machine

Super Frog is a great example of this too even if it's not something I enjoyed past the first 3 or 4 levels

[TCD]

Originally Posted by tarr

Not many other teams coded the Amiga properly, except for Thalion, Factor 5, Magnetic Fields and few others. Surely Core Design games were never that good in terms of using the hardware, even if Wolfchild and Hemidall were great Games.

Well put. As games they had quite a few flaws, but as Amiga games they put up a show. Alien Breed, even co-op, wasn't the best top-down shooter, but the music, graphics and atmosphere just made you come back for more. Or not if the simple gameplay loop bored you.

Just fired up Superfrog yesterday and it's not a great platformer. It's not bad either, but the presentation is just excellent for an Amiga game. It does get repetitive and the polish wears off a bit after the first level, but that doesn't stop me from feeling pretty happy to search around the colourful first level while listening to the music.

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I honestly fail to see what all of the hype around Team 17 was/is. I know unfortunately I'm in the minority here but apart from Alien Breed I found Team 17 games lacking in gameplay and sound every time. Sure they had Worms by pure fluke which probably kept them afloat and made them what they are today.

Compared to other publishers of the day they were not that special (IMHO).

Derived from 17-bit software as I recall so yeah... sold PD stuff. I'm not a fan.

Nope I totally agree, did they even know how to spell parallax?

Compare Super Frog to Soccer Kid, guess which one makes you think "woah! how the hell did they manage that with the OCS chipset". As a SCART RGB cable user I didn't like the excessive dithering on stuff like Body Blows.

Their games were not bad in general, and to be fair F17 Challenge is a really nice F1 game on the Amiga, on an A1200 it is also not too far off the graphic performance of Lotus II on Amiga 1000, but it played really nice and better than all that Mode 7 bullcrap on SNES racing games. Wish I could find the rest of my disk collection so I could play that. As for there rest.......they released very few turkeys compared to others but nothing ever on the scale of Beast 1, Lotus II, Turrican III, Sword of Sodan etc.

I would describe their games as inoffensive.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

it played really nice and better than all that Mode 7 bullcrap on SNES racing games.

Thanks for the giggle

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

they released very few turkeys compared to others but nothing ever on the scale of Beast 1, Lotus II, Turrican III, Sword of Sodan etc.

Alien Breed easily matches all these games on presentation, and Lotus / Turrican on gameplay. The other two don't have much of the latter, especially SoS, which is some sort of a bad joke, really. The high scores it got shows how desperate some people were in 1989 for anything arcadey with impressive gfx (which is not that great to start with anyway)



In any case, the companies which released these games also had their fair share of completely forgettable titles such as Aquaventura or Kid Chaos, which brings us back to the same point I made on the first page.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I honestly fail to see what all of the hype around Team 17 was/is. I know unfortunately I'm in the minority here but apart from Alien Breed I found Team 17 games lacking in gameplay and sound every time. Sure they had Worms by pure fluke which probably kept them afloat and made them what they are today.

Compared to other publishers of the day they were not that special (IMHO).

Derived from 17-bit software as I recall so yeah... sold PD stuff. I'm not a fan.

It was not just you.


Like Galahad said, I feel the fact they only made 1MB game made other devs push the bar too, and their games were very polished, very colorful, had music + sfx most of the time (I feel it was a (wrong) deliberate decision to not have ingame music on Project-X)... And I also have a huge respect for them supporting the Amiga for so long.

But gameplay wise, their games were really meh. I did enjoy Alien Breed 2 a lot, and I loved All Terrain Race. I can't remember any other Team17 game that I really thought it was great.

And I am a big fan of shoot'em ups, it's my fav genre by far... and Project-X isn't a good one. Level design is lacking, controls are sluggish, weapons are unbalanced... it was never a good game.

For me it always felt weird how the real good shoot'em ups on Amiga didn't get asmuch love as Xenon 2 and Project-X, since both aren't good games at all (With Xenon 2 actually being a turd).

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by TCD

Just fired up Superfrog yesterday and it's not a great platformer. It's not bad either, but the presentation is just excellent for an Amiga game. It does get repetitive and the polish wears off a bit after the first level, but that doesn't stop me from feeling pretty happy to search around the colourful first level while listening to the music.

Same. The amount of times I died because I jump and hit a bee I couldn't see floating in the air, drop straight down because of the blasted stun cycle and then land on spikes for an instant-death. Yay.

Lovely to look at and listen too, it truly is. But it is a hardcore Amiga platformer, designed to be hard to enjoy.

[acidbottle]

Team 17 were a decent developer/publisher for the Amiga.

Sure Superfrog is overrated, as was Project X.

Lets not forget, the almighty Psygnosis had a few duffs in their time to, though were more prolific at creating big hits to balance that out.

Cant deny that Worms DC, Qwak, Alien Breed, Super Star Dust and Speris Legacy were nothing short of brilliant, at the time. Maybe because they had a string of bang average games it tarnished their memory a bit. The real iffy ones were budget anyway and some of those were awesome to, Arcade Pool, the aforementioned Qwak and Apidya.

Cant say their shift to PC has been memorable, mostly crap to be honest, but I liked a few of their Amiga games a lot.

[Anubis]

I enjoyed most of their (Team 17) games, except one that were just nice to look at, but terrible to play (above mentioned Full Contact would be prime example) - but that intro was something just too look at - almost like a demo. I would load the game just to look at the intro. Kind of reminded me of movie intros.

Team 17 games were more polished then rest of Amiga games and technically they were quite OK.

I can understand that someone can be disappointing thinking it is a Sonic on Amiga - it was not, it was IMHO more than sonic, as wide open levels and speed was not required like in Sonic. Speaking of Sonic, I dislike MegaDrive/Genesis version because of its manic run. For me real Sonic is Master System / Game Gear version. (finished this one multiple times, Genesis version only once )