Amiga Interview - Martyn Brown at Team17 / Team 17


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Martyn Brown is the studio director at Team17. Ali Pouladi (Haplo) had the opportunity to talk to Martyn about the golden Amiga days.

Hi Martyn! It's a Pleasure to have this interview with you. Why don't you introduce yourself a bit more?

Well, I'm now 39 (yes…That is as old as it sounds) and when I was umm, 23 I co-founded Team17 after a few years as "17bit" which was an Amiga club selling games and doing PD/shareware distribution. If people want to know more, then I've got a blog at www.spadge.net.

You’ve had a hand in so many Amiga games, these are the ones I know about: Alien Breed, Alien Breed II, Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Alien Breed 3D 2, Apache, Arcade Pool, Assassin, ATR, Body Blows, Body Blows Galactic, F17 Challenge, Kingpin, Overdrive, Project-X, Qwak, Superfrog, Ultimate Body Blows and Worms. Did I miss any?

Yeah, quite a few - the ones that weren't released, finished or canned :-)
It was quite a few games in a relatively short period really.

How did it feel to be involved in such successful games?

Brilliant. I've always been a lucky sod and working with great people and having enormous fun helped, that’s where a lot of the enthusiasm for the games came from.

All those games were done by Team17… did you ever work with any other companies?

No. I'm still at Team17 too, I don't know of many others in the industry that's really been at one place all the time... Let’s hope I'm still here in another 15 years or so.

What made you and decide to join the gaming industry? Did you choose or stumble into it by happy accident?

Kind of half and half really. I've always been a tech and gaming nut and it just seemed like a good idea. As an Amiga fan, I was a bit pissed at all the half-arsed ST ports at the time and wanted to see 1mb games, not 512K ones.

So we started a company to do just that.

Team17 was a collection of highly talented people. How was it to work with such a group?

That’s a crazy question. It was fantastic, just as you would expect. Talent was only half the equation though, the characters of the people are amazing, and it’s what's kept us around to be fair.

What was the size of the team back then? Did all you guys work in-house only or did you have freelance developers too?

Usually 3-4 people, it was a mixture of in-house and external contractors.

Can you describe what exactly the role of the manager was? What were your responsibilities?

I just keep an eye on how things are run, discuss strategies and don't do much hands-on development these days. I do a lot of the business development and relationship management. Back in the Amiga days I was managing the development of most games and helping design them. Arcade Pool, Breed Special Edition and Superfrog contain my heaviest design input.

Were you a hardass manager?

Not at all. I don't bark very often, which makes it hopefully more effective when I do :)

How long did each game usually take to complete?

Back then 6-9 months really.

Did you ever do any coding or design for any of those games? Or did you stick with your own job?

I haven’t coded since I was in my teens (I had a Spectrum game named Henrys Hoard released when I was 17) but I have done a fair bit of design.

Did the programmers use Amiga machines to develop games? Or were they developed on PCs?

99% Amiga.

Which tools did you use to develop the games?

Everything was written in Assembler back then. We also used DeluxePaint, various audio packages and a bunch of custom tools.

Is the source code and raw graphics for the games still available?

Heh, somewhere in a box... You have seen Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, I think the back-ups of the source is in the box next to where they left the arc of the covenant.

No chance of a sequel to Superfrog or Project-X? ;)

We did X2 on PSX around 1996-1997. Nothing planned for Superfrog.

Which Team17 game is your favourite?

That’s difficult to say, probably Alien Breed Special Edition since it took 6-weeks and stayed No.1 in the UK for 33 weeks (an all time record).

Which one was the most difficult to create?

Superfrog was the one we couldn't really bear looking at post release. Getting a game to be that playable and flowing is hard. They all had their problems; development is no walk in the park!

Which one was the most successful?

Worms.

And Least successful?

I dunno, probably Assassin.

Why didn't Assassin do as well as the other games?

I don't know, maybe it just didn't appeal.

Alien Breed has the funniest cheat codes I have ever seen in my life… who picked those? Was it you?!

Yes, that was fairly typical of my naïve input back in the day. We liked to have fun, though. Most of our early games had silly cheats. (Ali: I don't think Martyn is a Manchester United fan.)

Alien Breed and Superfrog received a lot of cheer from the gamers and the press. How did it feel at that time?

How do you expect? We were a bunch of young guys having the time of our life, living the dream!

If you take a look on the Lemon Amiga website you'll see all your games are highly praised by the Amiga gamers. How does it feel to see your creations are still entertaining people after so many years?

Great, you can't wish for anything else.

Did you play other people's games too? What were your all time favourite Amiga games?

Of course. Kick Off 2 and all of Sid Meier's stuff... But I played pretty much most Amiga games ever created.

How much did you contribute to the disk/CD cover design of the games?

Quite a lot, again I used to manage that stuff.

Who made the decision that which games will be released on CD32 too? And based on what?

Commodore approached us about it so we had talks. The funniest thing was unveiling the controller in the boardroom; they even waited for the tea lady to leave the room before unveiling it.

Why was Commodore so secretive about their CD32 controller?

God knows, maybe because it was so ugly?

Are the people you used to work with still around? Guys like Allister Brimble, Andreas Tadic and Rico Holmes?

Yes, although none sadly at T17 (Rico left to live in Sweden just a few months ago). Andreas left a couple of years ago and Allister was always down in Devon. However, myself, Rico and Andreas are pretty much family and are often talking.

What is your best memory of the Amiga days?

So many, but I'd have to say winning "publisher of the year" in 1993 (we tied with EA).

And your worst?

The day when we found out that we couldn't really carry on making Amiga games. It'd been a very good place for us.

Is there anything about those days that you would change, had you the opportunity?

Difficult to say, but yeah, if we did it again in the same conditions with all the experience we have now, we'd have been much more successful :)

As Isaac Asimov would say, how do you currently justify your existence?

By helping people achieve their own aims, making my friends, colleagues and children smile.

Do you still play computer games? Any favourites?

Of course, I still play very many. And I have too many favourites – sorry for the boring answer.

How do you compare the games released these days to the ones released back in the old days?

I don't think you can. You can only compare the spirit that the Amiga had (and it did) and the fact that no other machine has had that kind of rapport with its users.

Well, thanks for your time! Anything else you might want to add?

Just thanks for helping me have a little nostalgia burst. Sorry this was rushed through, but I have precious little spare time...

Thanks Martyn…goodbye!

After this interview the Lemon Amiga members wanted to know more about Martyn - take a look at this forum topic (Martyn's username is Spadge).