One-on-One Fighting Games #3

Body Blows (1993)
By: Team 17 Genre: Fighting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: Commodore Amiga First Day Score: Too low to embarrass myself with
Also Available For: Amiga 1200, PC

I don't think there can be too much doubt about the huge impact that Capcom's mighty Street Fighter II had on the gaming world. One of the most obvious examples of this, besides the fact that it shifted a crapload of SNESs, was the arrival of many similar games on virtually every system around at the time. Team 17, already the darlings of the Amiga world, therefore needed little motivation to throw their hat in the ring, and the result was Body Blows. As with a few other Amiga games, however, you could initially be forgiven for thinking that it's little more than a tech demo, for there is virtually no set-up of any kind here. Fighting games are seldom ones to have deep storylines or anything like that but even SFII had a bit of background with the ghastly Shadaloo organisation and resultant world fighting tournament and all that stuff.

Overhead Run 'n' Gun Games #9

Alien Breed (1991)
By: Team 17 Genre: Run 'n' Gun Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Commodore Amiga First Day Score: 71,800
Also Available For: CD32, PC

There was a period during the early 90's when being an Amiga gamer was nearly as great as being a console gamer with regards to arcade-style games (I know, hard to believe - hee hee!), and this was largely thanks to Team 17. Although not founded until 1990 - quite late for an Amiga developer - they made an immediate impact. Their releases were rarely very original but were almost always technically impressive and highly playable. One that remains among their most celebrated works is Alien Breed, an almost legendary overhead run 'n' gun blaster. It was reminiscent of many such games before it in concept and also took a good few cues from a certain sci-fi film, but was immediately successful nonetheless. This would indicate that it's very good but when I gave it a quick try in my younger days I found it annoying and flawed. It's reputation endures though, so maybe I judged it too quickly and too harshly. I shall now find out...

Strategy Games #1

Worms (1995)
By: Team 17 / Ocean Genre: Strategy / Shooting Players: 1-4 Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: PC First Day Score: I'm a Worms master so I always win! :)
Also Available For: Amiga, CD32, Apple Mac, Game Boy, MegaDrive, SNES, PlayStation, Saturn, Jaguar

Even though I'm technically old now, I still consider myself fairly young, but the video games industry has changed beyond recognition even in my living memory. Games these days cost many millions to develop and often take years to reach fruition, and that’s with teams of a dozen or more developing them, but many years ago the opposite was true. Some of the best-loved retro games were created by only one or two people, often from the comfort of their own homes, or even by solitary students coding away into the early hours before oversleeping for their morning classes. Those days are long gone now, with regards to full releases for current systems at least, and one of the last successful examples I remember was the first in the now extensive Worms series.

Single Screen Platform Games #6

Qwak (1993)
By: Team 17 Genre: Platform Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Commodore Amiga First Day Score: 210,500
Also Available For: CD32, Game Boy Advance, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron

Most video game developers and publishers have a 'golden age' at some point and few would argue that Team 17's was on the Amiga. They produced a string of fantastic games for Commodore's powerhouse during the latter half of its life covering almost every genre, and one of them was Qwak. Unlike most of their other games, however, this is one that I didn't play until fairly recently, and it was then that I was surprised to find that it wasn't an Amiga game at all. Well, not originally, anyway. Indeed, this amusing little game by Jamie Woodhouse first found release on a couple of Acorn systems in the late 80's before Team 17 resurrected it for 16-bit gamers to enjoy and, as you might expect, they also applied a significant coat of polish while they were at it.