Team 17 vs Psygnosis

[roondar]

Overal impact, I'd say: Psygnosis. Better games? Personally I'd say Team 17. This is rather subjective though, as every one had their own ideas on what makes good games.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I personally think they were both responsible for releasing some of the worst commercial games ever created for the Amiga.

Just to name a few:

Alien Breed - Boring as AF.
Alien Breed 3D(II) - Runs like shit even on a high end machine.
Body Blows - An absolutely pathetic Street Fighter clone. Simply an embarassment.
Project X - Decent graphics and music, non existant gameplay. Ridiculously difficult.
Shadow of the Beast series - Completely unplayable.

See, this is what I mean - we all like different games
I'd say that Alien Breed was awesome!

Body Blows was not super, but still 'ok'. Certainly better than the official Street Fighter efforts.

Project X is divisive. Some people really like it, some people hate it. Me, I'm a shoot em up fan - love the genre, played tons of them (even bought a PC-Engine to access to some of its great shooters) and I do like it. It's very similar to console shooters of the time - difficulty included. Sure, it's not the very best shoot em up ever created, but neither are almost all others. I'd rank it as above average. As for the 'special edition', it is an overall improvement so I prefer it over the original, but it does cut content. This I'd actually rank as 'good', it fixes some of rough spots in an already quite playable game.

To be honest: IMHO, if you truly feel that Project X has no game play you probably just don't like shoot em ups all that much.

Shadow of the Beast one and two are indeed terrible, three is pretty decent.

My list of 'bad Team 17/Psygnosis games' would me more like (not complete):

Full Contact - extremely boring, silly controls. Nice intro though.
Brian the Lion - style over substance, the game is just not that much fun.
Assassin - what were they thinking!?
Apache - now here's a poor shoot em up.
Agony - overrated, it's just not that much fun.
Barbarian & Barbarian 2 - what were they thinking!?
Blood Money - what's with the lag & super short shot distance?
Microcosm -

Guys, for what it's worth, I apologise if I come across as negative. I'm going through a lot of mental health issues and I'm not in a very good place.

I sincerely hope you can find the way back up. Have been there, it's... Not good. Hopefully these forums help, even if only a bit.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by roondar

Body Blows was not super, but still 'ok'. Certainly better than the official Street Fighter efforts.

Fully agree.
At one point I had Sega Genesis (before my first Amiga), and I played some of the Genesis SF2, MK2 clones. All was crap compared to the Body Blows.
Off topic: I personally very much like: Brutal Paws of fury. Especially in 2P mode.

Originally Posted by roondar

Project X is divisive.

For me, it's not a divisive - it's simply, the best shoot em up for Amiga I saw so far. I still can't understand why people are complaining about this game so much?
It has amazing arcade graphic look, arcade gameplay feel, lots of sprites on screen, great responsive controls, lots of upgrades... what else would someone wants? They even created easier version of this gem.
And then I hear "Xenon this, and Xenon that"... man... I respect Xenon, but these 2 are 2 different leagues.

Originally Posted by roondar

Assassin - what were they thinking!?

Disagree.
Assassin was great for me.
What else can man want from a platformer, then nice, responsive controls, cool atmosphere, and they even give us opportunity to climb.
Now... when I think about it... you saying for Assassin, same as other for project X.

Btw... I have never finished either Assassin, nor Project X, because I am more into other genders, but I adore both games, and I hope I will finish them someday.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

I am more into other genders

Was just worth quoting

[vulture]

@roondar
A shoot em up fan and you don't like Agony? pffff!

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Was just worth quoting

Hah.

I can only quote bishop from Blackadder:
"I am a colossal pervert. No form of sexual depravity is too low for me. Animal, vegetable or mineral I'll do anything to anything."

[ Show youtube player ]

Now seriously.. was there a Blackadder game for Amiga? Or: Only fools and horses?
I know about Allo Allo (played few days a go).

[th4t1guy]

It's a hard choice between the two, both companies had some gems and both had some really bad games as well. Usually when Psygnosis failed though, they at least did it with more style.

Team17 loses purely by putting copy protection on their cd32 games. Who ever heard of a console system with manual copy protection!

[Anubis]

Body Blows was not good for people who did not have HD back then. You spend more time juggling floppies then playing...

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by th4t1guy

Team17 loses purely by putting copy protection on their cd32 games. Who ever heard of a console system with manual copy protection!

True, cd writers were still expensive so a strange decision, i think it was only 3 games they did it (1995 releases) and they did at least support the CD32 more than Psygnosis did (10-5).

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by roondar

Barbarian & Barbarian 2 - what were they thinking!?

Tablet games in 1988? Even Obliterator might fit

[john4p]

This is like comparing Dan Brown to Kafka.

ATR is in my top 10 Amiga games though.

[Ian]

For me, Team 17 games were actually fun in the most part.

Most Pygnosis games came across as tech demos, couldn't name a single one I actually enjoyed playing.

Lemmings aside, I guess, but I played that mostly at school on Archimedes as it was by far the best version in my opinion.

[005AGIMA]

Originally Posted by roondar

See, this is what I mean - we all like different games

Yep this! And that's what makes the world colourful.

As an Aliens fan, Alien Breed did a FAR better job of recreating the feel, tension, and adrenaline of Aliens, than anything with the official franchise at the time.

In fact, let's be honest here, it's a gauntlet clone, with an Aliens feel.

And I mean that in a good way.

Repetitive? Well yes. But all games were really, thanks to the limitations of the time. The game was still MASSIVE, and each level more challenging than the last.

I loved it!

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Ian

Most Pygnosis games came across as tech demos, couldn't name a single one I actually enjoyed playing.

They had some fun stuff, most if not all DMA developed games I liked.

Originally Posted by 005AGIMA

As an Aliens fan, Alien Breed did a FAR better job of recreating the feel, tension, and adrenaline of Aliens, than anything with the official franchise at the time.

I'd probably have liked the game more if it didn't toss piles of aliens at you at really unreasonable moments.

[balrogsoft]

Originally Posted by Anubis

I still don't get what is so special with that game...

When I played Hired Guns with the extra sounds back in the day (if you have 2mb chip) with my A1200 connected to my hifi sound equipment with lot of watts, and the experience was incredible, the cyber punk theme, the music... really the ambient of this game is one of the best in those years, but It's just my personal opinion.

[mcgeezer]

Psygnosis all day for me.

I think the only team 17 game i came close to liking was alien breed. I absolutely loathe superfrog and i’m probably the only one that doesn’t like alister brimbels tunes.

Each to their own though.

[donnie]

Team 17:

alien breed se
alien breed tower assault
super frog
worms
qwak
atr

Psygnosis:

flink
lemmings
lemmings 2 tribes
second samurai
shadow of the beast 3
walker

[th4t1guy]

I'm a bit surprised no one's mentioned Armour Geddon. It hasn't aged all that well, but at the time it came out it was decent. In any case, I had fun with it.

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by th4t1guy

I'm a bit surprised no one's mentioned Armour Geddon. It hasn't aged all that well, but at the time it came out it was decent. In any case, I had fun with it.

That game is on my "don't know how to play" list :/

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

That game is on my "don't know how to play" list :/

Yeah, mine to... the 1st and 2nd one

[Galahad/FLT]

For me personally, there was just something about a Psygnosis title that elevated it above others.

Sure, I accept that not all were very playable, but I think we are all in agreement, they were usually very polished.

Yes, Team 17 did some good games, but they lacked the polish of Psygnosis, the Special Editions of Team 17 games was almost an admittance that they got things wrong.

One thing I would have liked would have been Psygnosis copying Team 17's 1meg only stance much sooner, so many of their games are 512k with no utilisation of extra memory.