The Bitmap Brothers
| The Bitmap Brothers
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Holding company |
| founding | 1987 |
| Seat |
Wapping , UK
|
| management | Mike Montgomery, CEO Eric Matthews Steve Kelly Mark Coleman Dan Malone Ed Bartlett John Phillips Jamie Barber |
The Bitmap Brothers was a development studio for computer games in the UK . It was founded in 1987. The development studio programmed several games for the Atari ST and the Amiga and was one of the most successful developers for these platforms . Their later PC games could not match the sales of their earlier works.
Details
The Bitmap Brothers were based in London . The company's managing director was Mike Montgomery, who co-founded it with Eric Matthews and Steve Kelly.
The computer graphic artist Mark John Coleman often worked for the Bitmap Brothers. Together with Dan Malone, he was responsible for the typical graphic style of the Bitmap Brothers games.
Other contributors were John Phillips, Ed Bartlett and Jamie Barber.
history
The development studio released its first game in 1988, Shoot 'em up Xenon . The classic Speedball followed shortly afterwards . Before the development studio released its own games under the name Renegade Software , early Bitmap Brothers titles were published by Image Works and Konami . Since 2002, the company has released some of its most popular games for the Game Boy Advance and Pocket PC .
In mid-2003, the Bitmap Brothers game World War II: Frontline Command was published by KOCH Media and Strategy First . A Speedball Arena titled sequel to the Speedball series was announced for Christmas 2002, but was discontinued before publication. There were no new releases or announcements of new games between 2003 and 2006.
After years of silence, a message on the company's official website announced the game Speedball 2 - Tournament . Kylotonn Entertainment finally developed the game and Frogster Interactive published it in the fall of 2007. However, the game could not build on the success of previous titles.
On November 25, 2019, Rebellion Developments announced that the company had acquired the company as well as the licenses and rights to the games from Bitmap Brothers. In the meantime (as of April 2020) the Bitmap Brothers homepage is offline.
heritage
Two members of the Bitmap Brothers - Mike Montgomery and John Phillips - founded Tower Studios in the new millennium (together with Sensible Software founder Jon Hare ). According to the new company's website, their work at Bitmap Brothers ended in 2004. In 2011, Tower Studios released the game Speedball 2 Evolution for the Apple App Store .
Games
- Xenon (1988)
- Speedball (1988)
- Xenon 2 Megablast (1989)
- Cadaver (1990)
- Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (1990)
- Cadaver: The Payoff (1991)
- Gods (1991)
- Magic Pockets (1991)
- The Chaos Engine (1993)
- The Chaos Engine 2 (1996)
- Z (1996)
- Speedball 2100 (2000)
- Z: Steel Soldiers (2001)
- World War II: Frontline Command (2003)
Web links
- The Bitmap Brothers at MobyGames (English)
- Interview with Eric Matthews from the Bitmap Brothers - kultboy.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Official website for Speedball 2 - Tournament . The bitmap brothers. May 29, 2007. Archived from the original on May 29, 2007. Retrieved January 25, 2011.
- ↑ not known: Rebellion acquires The Bitmap Brothers brand and portfolio. In: News from Rebellion. Rebellion Developments Ltd., November 25, 2019, accessed April 11, 2020 .
- ↑ About page of tower-studios.co.uk, 2007 archived at archive.org. Archived from the original on November 9, 2007 ; Retrieved June 29, 2011 .