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Very sad news from UK. Blitz closes down (Oliver twins) — Gideros Forum
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    Very sad news from UK. Blitz closes down (Oliver twins)

    john26john26 Maintainer
    edited September 2013 in Relax cafe
    We were recently speaking of horror stories, well here's the worst. Blitz Games Studios has shut down. It was founded by Andrew and Philip Oliver two of the most famous names from the 1980s golden age. They started writing games when they were school kids at just 16 and within a few years were responsible form a big fraction of all ZX Spectrum games. They also created one of the most memorable games characters in the 80s, Dizzy.

    They were two 16 year olds in their bedroom with one computer. No libraries, no proper text editors (no real OS as we would recognise it) and everything had to be written in machine code. Yet they produced games which are better than 90% of mobile games being produced in 2013 -- and crammed hundreds of levels, whole worlds, into 48K.

    The Oliver Twins seemed to be one of the few success stories from the 80s, almost every other studio has closed its doors. Not any more. It's real tough out there...

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24066065
    http://giderosmobile.com
    https://github.com/gideros/gideros
    https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
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    Comments

    • techdojotechdojo Guru
      I'd just noticed that bit of news on Gamasutra as well.
      A VERY sad day indeed, both @Scouser and I know (knew) guys that worked there both currently and previously.

      I'm sure @Scouser will have his own comments to make but I really feel for the 175 guys (and gals) who've just lost they're jobs and have to go home and tell their families :(

      There might be a few more "indies" looking to see what the mobile space has to offer and to all of them I wish the best of luck.

      I'll bet it's a quiet day in Silicon Spa today.

      Likes: moopf

      WhiteTree Games - Home, home on the web, where the bits and bytes they do play!
      #MakeABetterGame! "Never give up, Never NEVER give up!" - Winston Churchill
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    • moopfmoopf Guru
      They tried a Kickstarter late last year for a new Dizzy game. I think they still love Dizzy more than most other people from that era still do to be honest and the cynic in me thought they were seeing other veteran developers raise a lot of money on Kickstarter and they thought they could use it to get their own IP moving again. Not a bad thing (and it's worked for some notable people) but it's not an IP I'd thought they'd get much traction with and smacked of all they had to go on. I don't think they've done much with their own generated IP for a while though, they were mainly a "for hire" company. Although I believe they're spinning a couple of things off into a new company?

      Because of that, ultimately Blitz's future has not really been in their own hands for a long time. Easy to say in hindsight, and it was probably the only way they could see to survive when they made the decision, but sad all the same.

      However none of that should diminish what they did as two 16 year olds which was, quite frankly, brilliant. Nor what they did with Dizzy and what they crammed in - it never held much interest for me as a game but as a piece of software engineering, and what they managed to do with such limited hardware, it was pretty special.
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    • john26john26 Maintainer
      A mobile version of Dizzy Prince of the Yolkfolk was released recently. Not sure how well it did. It had souped up graphics more resembling the Amiga/PC version. It was a bit sluggish on my device. I think it might have been better to just convert the Spectrum version, which was much more fun to play and go for the "retro" angle like Orange Pixel etc do.

      But that was done by Codemasters not the Oliver Twins. I think the conversion was by the guys from Big Red software.

      I would say convert all the Dizzy games to mobile just like on the Spectrum (aggressively retro: iPad = 4 times Spectrum resolution) and remind everyone of Dizzy. Then make a blockbuster Dizzy adventure.
      http://giderosmobile.com
      https://github.com/gideros/gideros
      https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
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