All The Games I Ever Worked On

Yes, I know that title ends with a preposition, but I’m a maverick. I thought I would finally try to document all the games in which I have been involved (is that better?). Here goes.

Images Software

1991–1993

I first encountered Images Software when I was there collecting Jim, the bass player in our band. Jim was on some kind of work placement scheme, getting paid a measly sum by the government to make tea. The company was run by Karl Jeffery, and it would later morph into Climax.

Funky Monkey [unreleased]

I had never created graphics for a game before but I did have some experience working in Art Director on the Atari ST. Images had an original platform game, called Monkey Business, early in development. It needed art and I began work on it. Fairly soon, however, the game was halted and in its a place a new game was born. I redesigned the central character and renamed him Funky Monkey. We spent a few months in development before I moved on. There’s a more detailed account here.

Extra

I may also have had a tiny involvement with The Hunt For Red October* on the ZX Spectrum (I think something needed fixing and the artist was out of the office), and a similar thing with G-LOC on Amiga.

*Jim’s name even appears on the credits for this.

SCi

1993–1998

John Chasey, Russ Dunham, Fergus McNeill, Me, Virgil Manning, Bob Plested, Steve Aplin, Steve Haggerty.

I was one of the first employees at SCi’s Southampton studio, which had been set up to develop their first CD ROM based PC Game. It was a joint venture between The Sales Curve (as they were then known) and Clem Chambers’ company On-Line Entertainment. It was a baptism of fire.

Lawnmower Man

It’s amazing what people will buy when they have forked out for an expensive piece of hardware and there’s hardly anything that’ll work on it.

Cyberwar

The Lawnmower Man may have been a weak game, but it sold well enough for SCi to want to continue making CD ROM based games. A sequel was spawned. It is effectively the same game, with some new clips, all running a higher res with more colours.

Kingdom ‘O Magic

I worked as an artist on this point and click adventure from the mind of Fergus McNeill.

Swiv 3D

We convinced SCi to make a 3D sequel to SWIV and I got the job of designing the game. It ended up being a group effort between many people at SCi, not least, James Sharman - the lead programmer and technical wizard behind the unique landscape engine in the game. Find out more about the game’s development here.

Extra

I completed an elaborate 3D intro sequence for Frenzy on PS1 before it changed its name from Full Metal Pigeon (as seen at the end of this video). I made a few small contributions to Caramgeddon 2: Carpocalypse Now. We also started work on a turn based game called Spellcaster.

io productions

1998–2000

Me, Nick Slaven, Andy Bain, Nick Reed, John Chasey, Paul Charisse, Mike Tucker, Duncan Wilson, Steve Wadsworth.

We left SCi and formed io productions. Our goal was to get a publishing deal for our sheep herding game, Stampede! We just managed to strike a deal with Infogrammes before running out of redundancy money. Sadly, however, that game would never be completed.

Stampede! [unreleased]

The original idea of creating a sheep herding game came from Andy’s girlfriend, I think. By the time we struck a deal with Infogrammes we had decided it would be a madcap, global adventure, featuring herds of various animals in strange environments. The story of its development and eventual cancellation is long and detailed - some more info can be found on Nick Reed’s website.

Extra

MUD 2 Client.

We developed a MUD 2 client for BT/Wireplay, but I’m not sure it was ever let loose on the public. We started work on a web based space warfare sim called Wetwar, which was heavily inspired by Planetarion. We also created promo movies for a Robot Wars style game called Smashbots, and started prototyping a liquid puzzle/action game called Mercuranium (almost identical to the PSP game Mercury which came much later).

IOMO

2000–2005

We started this company to work on WAP content for Nokia. By the time it was acquired by Infospace we had 30+ employees and were making mobile games for countless devices. These aren’t ALL the games IOMO made, but I think I was involved in these in one way or another. Note: Many different programmers and artists worked on these games, including me, but most notably Cameron Kerr, who created an incredible amount of pixel art in the early days of mobile development. By the end of my time at IOMO the teams making the mobile games were basically autonomous - we’d get the contract, come up with a rough outline and they programmers and artists would do all the hard work. I ended just doing proposals and marketing, but it was still great fun.

WAP Games

WAP was the first method for accessing the internet on mobile phones. The protocol was kind of a stripped down HTML - and it only lasted a few years. As a result, it is very difficult to find any WAP sites or games still in action.

On Device Games

IOMO developed several games that shipped on new phones. Mostly for Nokia.

J2ME Games

Metismo

2007–2011

Metismo were not a game developer, but instead we made tools for others to use. Minds greater than mine were responsible for the software we licenced out - but its main function was to allow deployment of apps to multiple mobile platforms from a single code base.

Vektrax

Vektrax was created to demonstrate some of the features of our product, Bedrock. It wasn’t the greatest game ever made, but it was early on in the world of iOS and it was unique.