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We had the incredibly rare privilege of talking with Philip Oliver - one half of The Oliver Twins - about their history in the British Game Development scene; from the early 80s all the way up to now. We talked about Dizzy, the EverCade, BitlzGames, and everything in between.

Here's a sample of the full show notes - make sure to click through and check them out.

Show Notes

I honestly don't know how we pulled this one off - to be fair The Oliver Twins are really nice people - we had Philip Oliver on this episode of the show. Philip Oliver is one half of the Oliver Twins, whose work includes (among many, many things) the Dizzy series of games.

Grab your popcorn, we're gonna hit you with nostalgia
- Squidge

Seriously both Andrew and Philip have been involved in so many games over the years, their official website lists 55 of them and that's just the earlier titles. And this is something that Philip mentions in the episode:

30 games on the PC; 10 games on the PS1; one game on the N64: Glover; 19 PS2 games; 10 Xbox games; 11 GameCube games; 13 Wii games; 9 PS3; 21 Xbox 360; and 30 handheld games... and that's just the Blitz Games ones
- Philip Oliver

So combining that total (154) with the 55 "Oliver Twins" games from their website - source; I've not included the collections titles - we get 209 games.

That's a lot of games, and not a duffer among them.

Let's Talk About Dizzy

For those who don't know, Dizzy is a super cute egg character who goes on platforming and puzzle based adventures.

Although Dizzy started out on the 8-bit consoles, there was a brand new game - Wonderful Dizzy - launched a few months before we recorded this interview. We'd always wanted to interview both Andrew and Philip, so the launch of the new game drove us to reach out proper.

But one thing we didn't realise about the newer Dizzy titles (aside from the rights issue - technically Dizzy is owned by EA now) is that all of the profits went to charity. In the case of the Dizzy collection on the Evercade, the profits were given to the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield.

Wonderful Dizzy & Looking Back

But why make a new Dizzy on a retro platform:

It is so expensive to make a game on a modern platform
- Philip Oliver

And at the time the Spectrum Next was starting to pick up steam; so why not combine that with a new Dizzy game?

We suddenly realised that we can't make a game that is worse than any of the other games, and that was absolutely obvious... so we were thinking that whatever we create, now that it's some 25-30 years later, that everybody perceives it to be at least as good, if not better. And, really, we need to be aiming better.
- Philip Oliver

Full Show Notes

Make sure to check out the full show notes for more discussion on the points we raise, some extra meta-analysis, and some links to related things.

Have you ever played the Dizzy games? What about the other 200-odd games that The Oliver Twins have been involved with? Did you know that they used to have a turnaround time of one month per game? And no ("real") source control?

Links

Catching up with The Oliver Twins is a doddle, here are some of the places you can find them:

• The Oliver Twins' website
  • The Oliver Twins on Twitter
  • The Oliver Twins on Facebook
  • The Game Dragons
    • This is being shut down soon, though
  • The Oliver Twins book
• Panivox
  • The new project that The Oliver Twins are involved in

Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, leave a comment on the show notes or try our brand new contact page.

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