Cubed

By Adam Riley 29.05.2007 6

Blitz on Nintendo Wii, DS, Downloads & Much More
Interview by Adam Riley :: Tuesday May 29 2007


Blitz Games may be a name that is only slightly familiar to many of you, but the British outfit has far more under its belt than licensed titles such as Spongebob. The Olivers were once at the peak of the Industry back in the days when the UK videogame scene was booming. Now the Oliver brothers are using the expertise to deliver a wide selection of games across all formats. Philip Oliver, CEO of the company recently caught up with Cubed3 and the resulting interview is below.

Cubed3: Could you please tell our readers how you got into the gaming Industry and about some of the other games you have worked on in the past?

Philip Oliver, CEO & Co-founder of Blitz Games - Long, long ago, well about 1980, Andrew and I were school kids when Space Invaders appeared in arcades. A friend let us play on his dad's Apple IIe, games like Zork, TaxMan and Night Mission and our parents bought us a Binatone PONG console for Christmas. Within a year our older brother bought a ZX81 and Andrew and I started playing with it and learning how to program very basic games. We got the bug and in '82 we were first in line for a Dragon 32. This had colour graphics and 32k of memory - although you could only use half of it because half was reserved for screen memory, but that was still a LOT! Remember we were coming from a ZX81 with 1k memory! We then moved onto a BBC Micro and then Amstrad CPC128 which is where we started to make our very successful games. Once our games took off we started to convert them to the leading games platform at the time - the ZX Spectrum. (1k = 1024 Bytes - a Byte is a single number between 0-256 - so that's not much!!!)

Games we've worked on - well that's now a very long list. But we remember and are very proud of the games we created for Codemasters in the mid-eighties - particularly the Dizzy series and most of the Codemasters 'Simulator' games. The full list is at: www.OliverTwins.com & www.Blitz-Games.com - (by all means print a list! ;-))


C3: Do you find that working on an established franchise as opposed to working on a brand new production is quite restrictive? And if so, in what way?

PO: They are different but both are fun and creatively challenging. When you are given no starting point it's hard to come up with something compelling and keep the enthusiasm focused through the whole development cycle. Whereas when we have a license we know the game will sell and we start with a lots of creative ideas, characters and scenarios, within that world we have to be creative to pull out the best elements and create a fantastic game which is guaranteed to sell and already has a keen audience waiting for it.


C3: What is currently on the cards for Blitz Games? Will you be working on Wii again in the near future or perhaps even something for the Nintendo DS?

PO: The Blitz reputation for quality games is growing fast and the company is growing fast

Comment on this article

You can comment as a guest or join the Cubed3 community below: Sign Up for Free Account Login

Preview PostPreview Post Your Name:
Validate your comment
  Enter the letters in the image to validate your comment.
Submit Post

Comments

Great Interview!Smilie

Dizzy is a God! Smilie

Good choice of questions and human-generated answers. Good stuff.

It's going to be shit and you jolly well know it.

Dizzy should make it to VC eventually. Are the games any good? Has anybody played them?

( Edited on 29.05.2007 16:01 by Darkspine Sonic )

Ive only played Fantastic Dizzy on Master System. Fantastic isn't a good enough word. It's brilliant.Smilie There's no save system. You start off with 3 lives and there are only another 4 or 5 lives available to earn. You had to collect 250 stars scattered throughout the entire game to unlock the door leading to the final boss. Was frustrating but also great to get to the end to find youve missed a star so you have to go searching through the entire game to find it. You can carry three of many items found in the game at a time which are used to advance through the game.

(I've also played the Mega Drive version which was shite in comparsion).



Also, the game has a great soundtrack. Full of memorable tunes.Smilie da da dadadada da da, da da, da da dadadadada.Smilie

The same game also came out for NES. That version is terrible, avoid at all costs. Hopefully, master system games are added to the virtual console to allow the superior version a chance to shine.

( Edited on 30.05.2007 21:50 by IfritXVII )

Good to see Blitz eager to get on the digital download scene via the VC as well!

With so many developers wanting to do this it makes you wonder why Nintendo is STILL holding off on it...

Adam Riley [ Director :: Cubed3 ]

UNITE714: Weekly Prayers | Bible Verses

Awsome intervew! Ahh Dizzy brings back some old memories!! Smilie

I see all these people insulting the Nintendo corporation because of the lack of mature content. Yet there is something about Nintendo (at least their games) that strikes a certain unadulterated feeling of joy!!!  Pokemon Y - 1048-9263-5562

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
jesusraz

There are 1 members online at the moment.