Life after Codemasters...
It was now November 1993. We had to get our name out to the industry and find new publishers as quickly as possible. CES a trade show in Las Vegas was to be held in the second week of January so we decided to design letterheads and business cards and prepare our first company profile.

We spotted a full page advert in CTW which is the trade publication of the games industry. It had been placed by Jacqui Lyons of industry agents Marjacq and was congratulating one of her clients on another number one bestseller and thanking the publisher and the industry for their part in helping to distribute the game.

We'd met Jacqui on a number of occasions whilst she'd been selling the PDS (Programming Development Systems) and so decided to give her a call to explain the situation we found ourselves in. In December she visited our office and we went through our company profile, our recent work, our problems and our potential for the future. Jacqui was very accommodating, offering to represent us to the industry with her vast array of contacts and we devised a plan to sell our services to the industry.

We also contacted Fergus McGovern of Probe Software another developer but one that had a very close relationship with Acclaim - the leading publisher of the day.

Judge Dredd
Title
Judge Dredd
Format
Game Boy, Master System
Released
February 1995
Publisher
Acclaim
There was a new Sylvester Stallone movie coming out, and while Probe developed the SNES & Megadrive versions we developed the 8 bit versions of Judge Dredd.

Marko's Magic Football
Title
Marko's Magic Football
Format
MegaDrive/Genesis, Mega CD USA only
Released
February 1995
Publisher
Domark/Acclaim
The lead programmer of Marko’s Magic Football had left Domark and there was no-one to finish the game so we were given the contents of the hard drive and asked to finish it. We reconstructed the game, solved some of the problems that had been experienced and, as it had gone so well, we went on to write it for the Mega CD as well. We didn't think that it had ever been released but we found an American producer who actually recalls buying it. We don't have a copy of it and as we've never seen a real box so the picture here shows a mock-up.

Theme Park & Syndicate
Title
Theme Park & Syndicate
Format
Mega CD
Released
Summer 1995
Publisher
Acclaim
Domark soon got the rights to convert Bullfrog games to the Megadrive & Mega CD and having just written Marko we were the obvious choice to convert Theme Park & Syndicate. We'd learnt a lot about how to get a game from cartridge and loading into limited memory in lots of small chunks from the vast storage area the CD offered.


Firo & Klawd

Firo & Klawd
Title
Firo & Klawd
Format
Playstation & PC
Released
October 1996
Publisher
BMG

We were desperate to get back into creating original games but the only work we were being offered was for conversions which paid the wages but weren't very rewarding to write. We finally got our big break though with publishers BMG to produce Firo & Klawd.

It was originally designed as an Isometric game that would work on Megadrive. The game was based on the classic ‘good cop, bad cop’ theory. You chased the crook across New York playing isometrically-viewed levels which were full renders streamed off CD with rendered clips between levels. The game was also released in Japan which was interesting particularly with all the dialog and voice-overs in the game.

We were delighted to get this contract. An original game, and a chance to make our way back to the top.

Firo & Klawd for PlayStation - Unreleased in the US!

Game Footage (Playstation)


Leading on from this game we won a prestigious contract with MGM to produce a game of the cult 80s film WarGames which is really where Interactive Studios (later renamed to Blitz Games) got back into mainstream games.

After this the teams of artists and programmers that we employed wrote the games while we managed the business and development side.

It’s been a rough, roller-coaster ride to get Blitz Games to the position it’s in today but although we’ve had low points it’s still been great fun and we’re still just as excited about creating great games as we’ve ever been.