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Team17 Software is a video game company, which grew from 17Bit Software, an Amiga PD/Demo user-group in the late 1980s. The company is currently based in Ossett, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. They are best known for developing the Worms series of games (initially developed by Andy Davidson), but they have made many other games, notably Superfrog and the Alien Breed series. Most of their early releases were on the Amiga home computer system and featured trademark smooth scrolling, and detailed cartoonish pixel art. However, they now develop for Windows PCs and all major video game consoles.
History Originally a publishing company called 17-Bit Software, which grew out of the Microbyte retail chain in 1987, they specialised in cataloguing, producing and publishing games for the Public Domain sector of the Amiga Market. In 1990 they stepped out on their own. Their first release was Miami Chase (an overhead car chasing game) and it was released under a name "Team 7". Then, adopting the name "Team17", they developed and published Full Contact for the Amiga. Their intention to produce a quality game that was not just ports of games released for the Atari ST and the ZX Spectrum was fulfilled - the game was quality in both gameplay and appearance and was universally praised as one of the best Beat 'Em Ups for the system. The company went on to produce many further titles, almost all of which were regarded as classics by the majority of Videogame Journalists (despite a brief disagreement with Amiga Power). Well known Amiga titles like Alien Breed, Assassin, Project-X and Body Blows were released in the early nineties. Team17 also published titles in the UK for other developers such as AUDIOS and Eclipse UK. In 1995, Team17 entered into an agreement with Ocean Software whereby Ocean would co-publish Team17's titles worldwide. The first title to be released under this agreement was Alien Breed 3D for the Amiga and Amiga CD32 systems. The second title was Worms, Team17's biggest success to date, and Team17's first multiple format release; The game was released in late 1995 and early 1996 for the Amiga, PC MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, PlayStation, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Atari Jaguar, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Sega Saturn, with a version planned for release on the Virtual Boy, although this was cancelled following the poor release of the console in Japan. The title outsold Fifa and Tomb Raider and despite its simplistic 2D art, became an all-formats Since the release of Worms the franchise has gone on to be very successful, selling over 9 million units worldwide. This success contributed towards the company's decision to move away from the Amiga software market which, by 1997, had long been in a state of decline. Team17 have since focused on the PC market, releasing titles such as Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy, Phoenix, and Addiction Pinball, although they have also released console exclusive titles such as X2. In 2003 Team17 released Worms 3D for the PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, the first title in the franchise that brings the game into three dimensions. While critically acclaimed the game left some fans cold, with claims that it did not match the simplicity and playability of the 2D titles. Team17 listened to their fans and on July 29, 2005 Worms 4: Mayhem was released for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, featuring improved graphics and gameplay. 2006 saw the release of for the Nintendo DS, and PSP, a brand new PSP port of classic puzzle title Lemmings (a game originally developed by DMA Design), and could potentially see new Superfrog and Alien Breed titles. Rumours of a new game in the Army Men franchise, a series of videogames originally developed by The 3DO Company, sparked when former Team17 musician Bjorn Lynne listed the title on his website in September 2005 on the Credits page of his website, but it has since been removed after being reported on Team17 fansite Dream17. However, the box of the game (called Army Men: Major Malfunction) does feature Team17's logo. Future developments In addition, due to the difficulties getting original titles to market in the current age, Team17 have begun developing titles for other publishers based on non-Team17 IP in addition to their own ideas. These titles have begun to be released and they commenced with Lemmings. Team17 is still an independent games studio with around 75 staff members. This makes them one of the longest surviving. The Amiga Power Dispute The company had a long-running feud with Amiga Power, an Amiga gaming magazine. Amiga Power had a fairness policy of giving a 50% score to an average game (50% being seen as average as it is halfway between 0 and 100), instead of 73% to keep the game producers happy *; a practice the magazine saw as inherently wrong. Despite giving high reviews to early titles such as Alien Breed, Team17 viewed the magazine with disregard — a cheat code was placed into the second Alien Breed title that, if entered, would display a secret message criticising Amiga Power's reviewing policy. Computer players at the easiest difficuly setting in Arcade Pool, F17 Challenge and Kingpin: Arcade Sports Bowling were named after various Amiga Power staff members. In addition to which, Team17 supposedly made allegations of bribery and corruption in the French Amiga magazine Amiga Concept *. No justification has been given for these actions. In 1995, Amiga Power printed negative reviews of Kingpin and ATR - Kingpin scored 47% and ATR scored 38%. Team17's response to this was to file a lawsuit demanding that the magazine stop "lying about their games" *. Team17 argued that the writer who had reviewed Kingpin had hardly played it, and that the review for ATR had been reviewed "in a style not affording the gravity demanded by a racing game". The result of the legal battle, if any, had not been disclosed; however, Team17 added their name to the list of companies who no longer sent review copies of their titles to the magazine, resulting in Amiga Power's writers having to purchase the retail copies upon release. Most titles reviewed after Kingpin received generous scores. Worms scored a mere 60%. The average mark of a Team17 game reviewed in Amiga Power was 73%. Following these events, Team17 required that other Amiga magazines within Future Publishing (such as Amiga Format) sign declarations stating that they would not, under any circumstances, share their review copies with any Amiga Power staff. Former writers of Amiga Power have stated (on their website AP2, a follow-up of sorts to the magazine) that subsequent editors of the magazine made attempts to re-open the lines of communication with Team17, which one Editor had proven to be almost successful with until Team17's Creative Director, Martyn Brown, put his foot down. The feud continued after AP had been retired, spilling over onto Amiga Power's Usenet group. Trivia | ||||||||
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