Yes, Mark was certainly one of the big talents of the 8-Bit era. You know I would love to reach out to him, but unfortunately getting his contact details seems to be pretty much impossible. I guess once he stopped working on Bitmap Brothers games he concentrated on other work. Still, if anyone knows where he is, contact details, please let me know!
I was living in Canary Wharf in 1994 just down the road from Wapping! Working in IT in the City. You could go to the library they had who's who books on businesses! @ 18:00 thats how I researched companies pre-internet.
The Bitmap Brothers were the true Rockstars of the early 90s. I remember eagerly anticipating every single game they released. Absolute legends! Years later, i ended up working with Eric Matthews at Sony London. One of the most starstruck I've ever been!
Indeed, many were star struck by Eric, as he was/is a great game designer. But bear in mind, there were a lot of other talents at the Bitmaps. I think one of Erics key talents, was in recognising talent and collaborating. Think of Xenon II, a game written by an external coding group, with graphics by THEIR artist (Mark Coleman) and music by Bomb The Bass, an artist signed to Rhythm King Records (founder of Renegade Games with the Bitmaps). Some pretty shrewd collaboration there, to make a truly stand-out game of its generation.
@@RetronautTech 100%. The outward facing figureheads are always the most prominent, but it's always a team effort. You don't make games like theirs without an incredibly solid team. Fascinating to hear about the collaboration on Xenon II. Bitmap Bros and Renegade always seemed to be linked together. I really should read more about that. Thanks!
You were so lucky to get a legit job interview with the Bitmaps. During the late 90's I had a job offer from a "famous" UK game programer I met on an online chat room. I worked on an Atari Jaguar game and some 8-bit tiles and was looking for programmers for a studiohe started up. I hadn't heard back from him for over a year since and it turned out he laid off everyone and shut down his studio to take an executive producer job in the States. And in recent years he's ripped off other young people promising them jobs in the gaming industry but in reali he hadn't done any work since the 90's. So yeah it was a good thing you didn't had online interviews back then...
That does sound like a pretty sucky situation. I spoke with someone on the weekend obout our "crazy" experiences in games, I said "I one went on a train from Wales to England, to interview at a AAA studio, only to be told IN the interview they were going bankcrupt." He countered with "I was living in England, interviewed for a job in Australia, got it, moved there, and on the first day in work, was told the studio was going bust and there was no job. Caramba! It certainly was a little bit Wild West back in the 80s and 90s, and some of us obviously got beat up badly in some situations ;/
Bitmaps were a great company. Yes, Z was pretty epic. Did you know it got to 2 in the PC game charts. So not such a great game? Well, sadly the same week it came out, a little game called Quake was released. And yes, it WAS a better game that Command & Conquer.
Yes, Im aware that Yost originally produced 3D software on the ST. That group was a bit of a dream team, considering he also got Dan Silva to produce its keyframe (animation) editor. Great peice of sofware. Pity it could not have been written first for the ST/Amiga. Im sure it would have been lovely on a 68040 A4000!
Its funny, I watched a video on it recently, completely hating on it. I dont think people realised what it was like to experience that game loading for the first time on an A500. The music and graphics were industry leading IMHO. Sure the game engine slows down, but then so did MANY games on the Amiga, as people tended to overload the beast in 16bit over enthusiasm :)
One other point on this. Xenon II was not written initially for the Amiga, or even the ST. It was written on the PC and then ported to the ST and soon after the Amiga. The Assembly line (an existing demo team) were the coders, not Steve Kelly/Mike Montgomery. And I think Mark Coleman (graphics) was also a part of that group. Not sure why the Bitmaps used that approach. Maybe to expand their capacity and bring in new talent? As it was not written natively on ST/Amiga, this might explain why the game tends to bog down, maybe they did not make use of the hardware on the Amiga, as best much as it could?
@@Toys-REVIEWNET I'm not sure to be honest. Eric became a head honcho at SONY when he left the Bitmaps around 2000 I think. Mike Montgomery founded some other studios and produced more games over the years. Steve Kelly, kind of the original Bitmap ( as he wrote Xenon), Im not sure about him, seems he slipped from public view. Rich? Well, maybe well off, but not rich. The Bitmaps closed doors for a good reason I would assume, lack of cash. The 90s was not kind on 80s game dev studios.
