The Story and Games of the Bitmap Brothers - Kim Justice
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ต.ค. 2017
- #retrogaming #amiga #bitmapbrothers #documentary
Finally, a long-requested documentary! The Bitmap Brothers are one of the best developers of the Amiga era, with games like Xenon, Speedball 2, Gods and The Chaos Engine in their library - not to mention Z later on. In this video we'll look at their story and games, including Renegade - their publishing wing - and all the tales that come with them. Enjoy!
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Fantastic episode. Thank you. Just one question: were the Bitmap Brothers involved in the SNES/ Megadrive versions of True Lies? Very similar mechanic to Chaos Engine imo. Many thanks
A quick clarification. I worked on Z, and also The Chaos Engine II. I and a guy called Terry Cattrell were hired in.. I think in 1994 to produce the 3D cut scenes for Z. It was a dream job for me, just one year out of uni, and my time there still seems a little unreal. At that point as I recall the game was already a good 2-3 years in development, it had started dev on the Amiga, but then it became clear the machines aging hardware could not handle the design, and it was dying in terms of sales, so they switched to PC, and that took time... Mike Montgomery was not happy about us being hired, he was not into the idea at all, though Eric was. The Bitmaps were pushed by the publisher as the game would be on CD, then new darling media, and putting a 3mb game on a 650mb disc, when everyone else was also doing snazzy 3D cut scenes just was not going to happen. So, we were hired. I think this is why to this day the 3D gets blamed for the games prolonged dev. But it was more complex than that,
Even when I joined I remember they came across as being embarrased about how long the game had been in dev at that point. It took us another 18 months to do the 3D, but I dont recall it actually slowing down release. During this time, I also did a lit 3D UI for the game as well, based on a retro tanks console, with Nixie style readouts. A LOT of dev happend in that time, and it included the lead coder being poached by Westwood Studios to work on Command and Conquer. This resulted in most of the developers, Mike, Steve, Eric, and two or three others moving to an apartment in Las Vegas, to be with the developer, as he had agreed to help hand over the code in the evenings. It seems he HAD an offer he could not refuse, but he wanted Z to keep going.
There were issues I think with the Chaos Engine II, reading between the lines, it had been developed on the Amiga, that platform was dying. Z was taking all of Eric Mathews (the main game designer) time, and so CEII was handed to Simon Knight, who had worked on Cadaver with Steve Kelly, to design and produce the game to market. I actually did some of the tile art on CEII, as Dan Malone was not available to finish the graphics. I'm guessing it was a lack of funds, rather than his time. So, I completed the missing tiles copying Dan's style, and these were pasted into levels (Im sure he did not like this). BUT, Dan would actually normally do the final art pass and polish, and then draw more tiles where needed, rinse and repeat, and this is why The Chaos Engine looked so great. On CEII this did not happen, no one did this, so thats why it looks kind of un-finished. Because it was not a priority, they knew it was doomed to poor sales, so they pulled cash away from it.
Z was released in 1996 I think, and luck would have it it was at the end of the same week when Quake was launched. So I dont think it ever made no.1, but it did make number 2. I think it was a great game, sadly shadowed by Command and Conquer. It ran in VGA mode on a PC, which at the time felt pretty high end, kind of like 4K in 2019, it felt pretty cutting edge, and it allowed 4 player network head to head. This is in 1996, so this also was pretty cool. I know this, as we played Z a lot in the evenings in 1995, testing out the net code. I was pretty good at it, in the end Eric would not play against me, as I tended to beat him. Ha!
I think I was very lucky to work with the Bitmaps, on what I consider to be their last great game. It was kind of bitter sweet as I fell out with Eric, for reasons Im still not clear on. Eric kind of WAS the Bitmaps, knowing this I left in 1996 as Z was complete. It appears it was not only me. I think Eric had become too large an ego by then and a distance was growing between him and Steve, and also Mike. Like in a band where the lead singer thinks they ARE the band, this is not healthy, its a TEAM project, and that team dynamic just was not there any more. Eric I think split soon after Z, and is now head of Sony games. I think what made the Bitmaps great and made it stand out, its ego (Eric's ego?), in the end was what destroyed it. It's a pity he did not work on any games that I was aware of. But hey, he had already worked on some of the greatest games in video game history. Anyway, these are just my recollections and opinions. It was a long time ago now. But great fun whilst it lasted...
Thanks for sharing your experiences. It provides an interesting insight into the end of the Amiga era.
Thanks for your information. It is all very interesting.
Cheers!
"LiL'JpD."
Fascinating stuff, thank you for posting your experiences and thoughts.
For me, Speedball 2 on the Amiga is one of the best games of all time ❤️
Agree, it would still be in my top 10 games ever made (none of the other BB games come close).
Ice Cream, Ice Cream.
Me too
Even the track in the beginning was totally awesome !
@@Joetoep Agreed! 😃
Steve Kelly is my uncle, and I only just found out recently about the Bitmap Brothers, really great video!
Bitmap Brothers died off when they stopped playing to their strengths.
Namely top notch pixel art. Another victim of the "2D is last gen" attitude pushed by Sony and Nintendo in the 32bit era. With the recent pixel art revival and market for more old skool'ish games, I'm sure there's a place for a Gods sequel.
There is now! It's on steaaaaammmmmmm YaY! Pretty darn amazing too
I would say that was Sony America trying to abandon 2D games, Sony Europe (especially Sony UK) were far more open, and released some amazing looking 2D games like Lomax in Lemmingland Etc.
Larry Bundy Jr I agree with that. For example, you all got “Mickey’s Wild Adventure” for ps1 and America didn’t. Freaking shame, as it was a great game on the Sega Cd and looked stunning on PS1
Low-Res pixel art games are now their own genre. The archaic notion that it's just "old" is out the window, because their very aesthetic nature almost determines how the game will play. There was a novelty value when 3D came along which has long since worn off, and folk have realised that you just don't get the same "feel" playing in 3D as you do with a pixel art game. Even the pseudo 2D games can feel a bit awkward if the smooth animation isn't set right and it takes ages to turn around or whatever. It may look pretty, but mechanically a 16x16 sprite instantly flipping on its X-Axis will be more satisfying gameplay wise than a 3D rendered character taking a second more to go from left to right.
I love the British software houses, the way they ran with strange and unique ideas is amazing. Look at wiz kid, lemmings, gta, populous, walker and worms. Just to mention a small few, the risks they were willing to take just makes you see how linear the market has been since the ps1.
I'm actually sad about the direction game development took. I still remember carefully opening up my amiga 500+ cartoon classics box and loading lemmings. Before this tetris was my only other puzzle game and simcity the only other game I'd played that didn't neatly fit into a hole. The visuals and high quality soundtrack were so far apart from my only other console (atari 2600) i no longer needed to look at the beautiful box art and imagine that was the game, take centipede for example. I didn't see a oddly shaped box shooting connected boxes but the box art. Now i didn't need to do that, now i had real levels. Before this levels mainly = a change of colour, speed and sound pitch.
PS, 10:40 cadaver looks so much like the chaos engine background.
Also is the narration done by an old UK videogames TV guest presenter? The voice sounds familiar, maybe gamesmaster or the itv version.
Xenon was the game that first introduced me to them. On the Atari ST. The game blew me away as it was true arcade quality.
_Xenon_ was also played on _Get Fresh_ during the "Get Mucky" inserts. Made at Anglia Television in Norwich and presented by a leather-clad Charlotte Hindle in a set built to resemble "the bowels of the Millennium Dustbin", two kids, each representing a school, would compete against each other on a computer game, cheered on by their respective classmates. Whoever scored the most points won. And for the loser? Well, one of their friends would have a large bucket of gunge tipped over them, hence the name "Get Mucky".
These segments were played as a tournament, building up to two semi-finals and a grand final in the last episode of the series. The overall winner won a prize for their school (in the example I can think of, it was a camcorder) and a personal prize for himself/herself (in the same episode, this was a Sega Master System with games and Zapper light gun)
Many of us who lived through the 90s as children owe a lot to Bitmap Brothers. I thank them for creating Speedball 2 Brutal Deluxe and Chaos Engine. You brought such happiness into my life when I was a kid.
That's super inspiring for young devs like me, especially 2D/pixel art oriented ones.
(I know speedball 2 screenshots are in my inspiration and references folders since a few years, way before even knowing about the Bitmap Brothers)
This is something we don't really learn at school, there is a huuuge lack of video game history in our school (I'm more talking about video games school, of course).
So, thank you a lot for all these history courses! You sure rock!!
Ah, yes, love the Alan Partridge cameos... one of the great comedic characters.
Great vid - loved the Bitmaps back in the Amiga days. Their games were nearly always superb. I've just been bought their book which is also a great read if you're into the history behind the studio!
I know these are all slightly old news for you, Kim, but I just wanted to say that I am bingeing all your documentaries and I am loving them!! Thank you for the excellent work.
All your stuff is good enough to be on actual telly. Reminds me of channel 4.
As always top quality stuff Kim. Brought back some great memories of their games, especially the Magic Pockets game which featured on Motormouth, god it makes me feel old !!
I love Gods and Chaos Engine so much. They're expertly made and super addictive. Playthroughs are never exactly alike.
Just got Gods on the PS4 and Chaos Engine on Steam, it’s great they’re still out there (the secrets in Gods are still awesome). I’d love a new version of Cadaver. I never finished it but loved its atmosphere (it’s still out there as abandonware)
Fantastic documentary! I really enjoyed this as the Bitmap Brothers were my gaming and graphics heroes as a teenager on the Amiga. Thanks so much!
The great bitmap brothers made arguably the best games of the early 90s! Great video!
Brilliant. Been looking forward to this one in particular. Kudos Kimbo!
Fascinating stuff for an old gamer like myself. Great work Kim, good history lesson and plenty of nostalgic insight. Will be watching more of these.
I never cared for the Bitmap Brothers "sports" games. But Xenon II was one of my favorites. It was hard, but beautiful
Kim - your a gosh darned genius!
I love these retro gaming documentaries and really appreciate the research and production values!
Z was one of the best RTS there. The idea of not to use resources (like ALL other RTS) was brilliant. Instead, your resources are flags and sectors you capture. Which force you to push forward. Only Company of Heroes took this idea and perfected it. Z is still in my collection, I play from time to time on DOSbox. Also multiplayer was just stellar. I play computer games since 1986, but playing Z with my friends was one of the most notable memories. Thank you BB!
Thanks for this review of the fantastic Bitmap Brothers, great coverage and brilliantly covered.
Awesome, thanks for doing this mate. The bitmaps were the epitome of my baptism into gaming in the 90s. really well done :)
Ice cream.... Ice cream! I think Speedball 2 was probably the best of the lot for me. Great docu as always Kim.
Great video, remember playing xenon on the Amiga millions of year ago. Nice to hear the Nostalgia Nerd voiceover.
Great video - thanks for posting. Brought back some memories.
Another great video Kim. Keep up the good work!
A Kim retrospective on the bitmaps....uploaded on my birthday? Happy birthday to me...thanks kim great stuff, keep it up
Happy Birthday :-)
SpiderEyes ta very much. Have a good day yourself :)
Chieftain Mk5 ta very much......this can't be TH-cam, comments too nice today
Wie geburtstag!
tuffasgong thanks....I think :)
Great video Kim. Was a nice bit of Amiga related nostalgia for me.
Every bitmap game I played was amazing, I would love to see some ports to current gen systems, Speed ball 2 would be cool!
Cheers Kim, great video as always.
Incredible video, Kim! Thanks for your efforts!
Cheers!
Well presented and very informative. Usual standard. Thanks Kim
Renegade and Bitmap, to me, were Amiga. Ironically Chaos Engine, or Soldier of Fortune, is one of the greatest games to grace even Sega Genesis or SNES, but since it's not Mario or Sonic, it can be picked up super cheap...how ironic. Zed on PC was a great looking RTS, but got super hard quickly. After the Atari 8 bit computers, I migrated to Atari ST in 1987 and one of the earlier games on ST was Zenon...what jaw dropping times and great memories that followed after buying an Amiga 500 in the same year...great nostalgic video.
Having this drop officially on my Birthday is a lovely little treat~!
Your videos are really instructional amd give deep insight into these software companies. Thumbs up!
Great work as ever, cheers Kim.
Well researched and presented as always Kim. Keep it up.
Yay you used some footage from a vid i made for the super game super show i think maily as its the only game footage out there lol love the vids kim 100% production value
In order to finish Z, Eric, Mike and Steve (Kelly) had to follow Steve Tall when he went to Westwood. They literally, packed up their computers and flew to Nevada for a few months and worked out of a hotel room.
Thank you for this, I remember playing Chaos Engine for hours on end when I was younger.
Kim, thanks for doing this, you made my week 👍🏻😎
Very detailed thanks for the video, great to learn a bit more about what happened.
Speedball 2 got a C64 port, that was very very good
Great video so many games from my childhood. Still play SB2 Very regularly amazing game.
The chaos engine is unquestionably a total masterpiece. I bloody loved it!
I had it on the SNES, it was the only BB game I'm aware of that had a good console port.
So many classics :-) And another great video of course.
Finally! Thank you!! The video is awesome as always. Been waitin for this one. I have both of the mentioned books and they are awesometacular ;) So...Sensible is next? Or maybe Team17 :D
"Ice cream! Ice cream!"
Another great sick video dood, Amiga days where awesome days, swapping disks, demos and a great sense of community!!! Speedball 2 was my fave game EVER and the tunes in Xenon II and Magic Pockets blew my mind!
Awesome documentary, love it!
Great video as always Kim... 👍
An amazing video on my all time favourite video game makers. Well I'm off to play Gods on my Amiga 1200.
Looking forward to this.
The Cohen brothers of the amiga!
37:30 I like the fact that you used a quote from Chaos Engine ending to conclude this video. I used this quote a lot as my motto on forums back in the day as well as avatar from Chaos Engine (I still use it on yt and some other sites).
Into. The Wonderful. Oh, it is all coming back! I am literally crying right now.
Great work. I've really been looking forward to you making a vid on the Bitmaps. I remember seeing screenshots of Cadaver in the magazines back in the day, and it is to this day perhaps the one title that truly makes me regret never owning an Amiga. When you say that it still looks good today, you are wrong only insofar as it doesn't just still look good; it still looks incredible. Which leads me to a nitpick: your video seems to imply that the only 8-bit version of Speedball was on the NES. I can report first hand (i.e. I bought a copy) that there was indeed a C64 version. Unsurprisingly, it was terrific.
Legendary Great Games And Studio
Somehow missed this one, thanks Kim
What a great video, well done mate !! Subbed!
To me Xenon 2 on the PC was the one that got away. I made it to the final boss and couldn't kill it. Then school began again and I kind of wandered off and didn't enter tryhard mode again. Cadaver confused me. But you could recognize a Bitmap Brothers game just by looking at it and you knew it was good. They were hype even if you didn't read the mags. That logo meant something.
Bitmaps games were always instant classics. Sumptuous graphics, atmospheric audio and compelling gameplay. I still had my A500 in 1995 until the PS1 stole focus.
Uridium II was easily the best Renegade game published. i still play it today on my A1200. what a blast.
That looked next-level when it was released.
Top historical stuff as ever, love it.
I have made games as a hobby since 1985 and the Bitmaps, particularly the art style, were an inspiration to me. Dan Malone is one of Britains best artists and not just pixel art. Look at Gods and The Chaos Engine and remember they only had 32 colours to work with.
I love the smell of Megablast in the morning, smells like victory. Nice upload Kim!
“Into....into the wonderful....” ah classic music from the classic Bitmap Bros. Speedball 2 was a game I played way too much on the Atari STe.
Another great vid!
I'd forgotten that The Chaos Engine 2 was delayed like that. I bought it for A1200, which I think was the AGA version, good times. The artwork and music style of Bitmap Brothers games are what make them.
Great video. One of the best Amiga developers!
As others have said the bitmaps died for me with my Atari ST (i didn't have an Amiga till later after it was long dead) and they moved to the PC with Z.
You could spot one of there games from the awesome art style and its hard to express how there games just looked way better than the competition when looking back at them now. I spent so long playing Xenon 2 i could finish it with ease as i knew what items to buy and when to use the old super nashwan. If i recall correctly upon finishing the game the shopkeeper would turn off the screen which as a 12 year old i thought was amazing (i recall even showing my parents who were suitably puzzled by my excitement)
Also at school we all had so many copied games (Pompey Pirates anyone?) but i always made the point of buying the bitmap brothers games in there glorious oversized boxes, pawing through the manual on the bus on the way back home :)
Awesome vid, Kim. ;)
That was a good one indeed.... Well, if I might suggest a future topic concerning awesome developers: please do Factor 5, my local heroes. I still fondly remember Julian Eggebrecht as an Editor in Video Games Magazin at the beginning of the 90's before the studio got famous. And good news, he declared having bought the Turrican and all the Rainbow Arts IPs like Giana Sisters and reforming Factor 5 in March 2017.
Top vid again Kim, but I'm sure one (or even BOTH if you include the C64) of the Speedball games got 8bit conversions...
Both in fact... yes indeed!
I was never a huge fan of Bitmap games but I've always admired their philosophy and their business practices.
insomnia's been kicking my ass but hey, the early bird catches the kim justice upload
VIROCOP! god i got that on a cover disk. one of my fave games of the time that. i forgot all about it until now thanks!
Nation XII was John Fox? Damn. Thanks for the detailed history. Loved Magic Pockets btw, more than Gods. It's deeper.
YES Kim!!! Thank you 😎
There's no way on earth they'd never heard of or seen 'Rollerball'!!! It was prominently in the video shops and I'd seen it repeatidly on TV BEFORE Xenon came out. Suppose they can't admit they copied the idea can they haha!!!
The little cutscenes animations of putting on a glove or a player banging knuckles on their thigh were direct take offs from Caan's performance in Rollerball. The game concept may not have been inspired by the film, but an obvious intention to mimic it came in during production!
In such a limitd industry back in the day, EVERYONE knew rollerball, whether they'd seen it or not.
The only game I knew was theirs was GODS, because even the console ports available here in the states said "The Bitmap Brothers" on it. I had no idea they were also responsible for Soldier of Fortune.
love your work but the c64 got ports of both speedball 1 and 2
Xenon 2000 was actually part of a series that was to teach readers how to program a computer game and included the full source and graphics and each month they would take you through another bit of code. There was also a competition that asked readers to submit their best updates to the game.
Fantastic thank you
Kept me very interested Kim. Now i want to dig out my miggy and enjoy them, once again.
Kim always delivers great videos. I have the joy of this after a long night shift, so can relax and doze off to her voice and then watch it again later.
Kudos to you Kim.
I had Speedball for my C64, it was very good indeed.
A great history summary Kim. There was a show called Get Fresh hosted by Gaz Top and Gilbert the Alien, which went around the country in the Millennium Dustbin. Occasionally they would play a Xenon phone-in game, and I remember being blown away by the arcade quality graphics when I was used to an 8 bit C64 at the time.
If truth be told, the Xenon games are not fun, Gods is way to long and difficult, and Magic Pockets is not much fun compared to say, Turrican 2. Really the bitmaps are best known for The Chaos Engine and Speedball 2 - undoubtedly mega classic games and rightly so. I tried to like Z on the Playstation but the AI difficulty just left me cold. But as you say, the Renegade level did have its fair share of mega classics like Ruff n Tumble, so I guess the good ones balanced the bad ones in the end.
Like with many Bitmap Brothers games, Z still holds today.
Oh wow, I absolutely loved Uridium!! Z was a very difficult RTS :(
Ah the Bitmap Brothers. They were never the same after they rebranded as the PNG Posse.
googleboughtmee the gif guys, jpeg Joe's?
Indeed.
TIF twins?
The JPEG Junta didn't have the same ring, did it?
GIF Guerillas could've gone far.
HOLY SHIT!! Ruff 'n' Tumble!! That was what it was called! After nearly 20 years found it again!
Best Amiga devs for me. Gods, Speedball 2 and Chaos Engine especially.
Gotta love the working titles for Cadaver:
Cadava
Eater Of The Dead
Stiffy
Inspiration for the game came from the old Rare Isometric games and Get Dexter
The Chaos Engine, no doubt the DIAMOND in the collection of any Amiga owner,...FACT!
What a gem!
As soon as someone mentions Xenon 2, that theme tune enters the brain.
Funny. Watching this video in 2020 and randomly Ghislaine Maxwell's dad pops up. Knew absolutely nothing about all of it, didn't even know that was her dad until I looked his name up. But everything makes a whole lot more sense now.