Hi,
I'm an independent game developer and have found Team 17 games to be both entertaining and interesting over the years. I'd like to redevelop some of the old games but I'm not sure if Team17 do business with small-time 'garage' development studio's.

Does anyone know if Team17 would be interested in discussing letting an independent developer loose on some of their old games?


Actually, a more important questions is: Is anyone interested in playing old Team17 games on current platforms?

Ty

There are definately a fair few interested people. Team17 still have a decent-sized fanbase for their classic Amiga titles such as the Alien Breed series, Superfrog, etc.

As for allowing independant developers to use their old IP, I remember one guy started an Alien Breed project a while back (there was even a working prototype) and the Team17 staff seemed quite happy with it all.

Maybe send a PM to Martyn Brown, the creative director of Team17, his forum account name is "Spadge".

Hey,
Thanks for the reply and the referral to Spadge. I'll send him a message and see what he says.

Do you know what happened to the Alien Breed project? I never heard of anything hitting the wide world.

The thread about it is here (http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=20213) (you can see Spadge's reply part-way down the page - he didn't seem bothered), but the site that had the download on it appears to have disappeared. Fortunately, i still have it installed on my PC, so hopefully it didn't require an installer and will work fine if i just zip up all the files and upload them here (http://www.clansfx.co.uk/downloads/AlienBreed.zip) :).

It's still available here:
http://www.mentalillusion.co.uk/downloads.php

And no, it doesn't use an installer.

Edit:
Hmm. Seems that this is only a demo ~12MB ins size, while M3ntal's version is larger.

I think the whole thing is only a demo, afaik only one part-level was ever made. No idea why mine is larger, but the one you found there is probably the same.

I got a response from Spadge and the tide has turned for indie redevelopment of the Team17 back catalogue. I assume fan-clones are probably still ok (I didn't ask specifically), but real redevelopment of the old games by 'garage' developers for re-release is not on the radar for Team17.

It seems this is the case for many companies. I had a chat with the business contact at Take2Interactive the other day and got the same response.

When I talked with Atari about some old Ocean games they were reluctant to even discuss what possibilities there may be with a small-time, unknown, developer.

Ah well, thanks for at least asking. I'd love to see a few classic games get a remake.

Well, hasn't there been a deal with small Scandinavian developers that were hired to develop games for mobile and handheld devices?
With T17 as the quasi publisher...

Edit:
Oh, it's a bit different that I thought.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=19815

Ex-Teamsters doing outsorced stuff for XBLA.

IP is one of the most valuable things games companies have. If someone remakes one of their games that makes very little odds to them, because the original is already out there and available. Nobody's going to try and re-sell it (usually). But if someone was to develop a "fan game" that took, say, Alien Breed and made it fully 3D with dynamic lighting and fantastic level design and all the trimmings, and do it well, that would make it very hard for Team17 to sell a new Alien Breed game themselves. If you could find someone to publish it you might have more luck, because then Team17 could just take a cut and everyone's a winner. that's more or less what happened with WOW DS.

I'd love to see an official comment (by Spadge, prefferably) on this subject.

I for one would be very interested in seeing some old games (not the IP itself, obviously) released as open source to ease accurate porting to modern platforms. Having "Superfrog" and "Tower Assault" (with netplay!) running natively on GP2X (eliminating the need for Amiga emulation) would make my day. :)

google 'alien breed' and you'll find a very 'balls attached' ab remake named obliteration

google 'alien breed' and you'll find a very 'balls attached' ab remake named obliteration
For the lazy slackers like me:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/xavnet/alienbreed/

Hah, Ben's site is in their links.