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Sensible Software 1986-1999
Produced together with Sensible Software founder Jon Hare, Sensible Software 1986—1999 is the ultimate retrospective of the British software house behind some of the most groundbreaking and fondly-remembered games ever produced, including Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, Mega lo Mania and Wizball.
The book chronicles the rise of Sensible – from its C64 beginnings making games such as Parallax, Microprose Soccer and Wizball, to its million-copy-selling Amiga heyday in the early ‘90s. The narrative – guided by games industry luminary Gary Penn – tells the Sensible story through interviews and anecdotes from the team, legendary developers, industry bods and our pick of the games journalists who saw Sensible rise to world stardom, first hand.
This is paired with an exhaustive visual tour celebrating the company's idiosyncratic style: sprites, game maps, typefaces and box art, all beautifully reproduced. We also dig around in the Sensible vaults to uncover a bounty of never-before-seen archival material including design documents and hand-drawn plans that show the first inklings of Sensible’s most famous games.
‘Praise the heavens; Sensible Software 1986—1999 is a ruddy triumph.’
—It’s Nice That
‘A brilliant read from start to finish ... It’s not just a videogame history lesson, it’s a glimpse into the lives of the people behind the games that so many of us have grown up with.’
—The Average Gamer
The book chronicles the rise of Sensible – from its C64 beginnings making games such as Parallax, Microprose Soccer and Wizball, to its million-copy-selling Amiga heyday in the early ‘90s. The narrative – guided by games industry luminary Gary Penn – tells the Sensible story through interviews and anecdotes from the team, legendary developers, industry bods and our pick of the games journalists who saw Sensible rise to world stardom, first hand.
This is paired with an exhaustive visual tour celebrating the company's idiosyncratic style: sprites, game maps, typefaces and box art, all beautifully reproduced. We also dig around in the Sensible vaults to uncover a bounty of never-before-seen archival material including design documents and hand-drawn plans that show the first inklings of Sensible’s most famous games.
‘Praise the heavens; Sensible Software 1986—1999 is a ruddy triumph.’
—It’s Nice That
‘A brilliant read from start to finish ... It’s not just a videogame history lesson, it’s a glimpse into the lives of the people behind the games that so many of us have grown up with.’
—The Average Gamer
340 pages, Paperback
First published October 7, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 20, 2020
A novel style for this oral history of one of the great game developers. Gary Penn is an accomplished writer, but he does have a big personality and you do sometimes get the sense -rightly or wrongly- that he's putting words in the mouths of his interviewees.
It does also feel that some of the more contentious parts of the history are glossed over, in my own experience people tend to remember conflicts more vividly than seems to be the case here and it doesn't really get followed up on.
Regardless, if you're a gamer of any vintage then it's a great insight into the world of games in the halcyon days of independent developers, particularly in Europe. They could be -and sometimes were- rockstars; which only made it more fun.
It does also feel that some of the more contentious parts of the history are glossed over, in my own experience people tend to remember conflicts more vividly than seems to be the case here and it doesn't really get followed up on.
Regardless, if you're a gamer of any vintage then it's a great insight into the world of games in the halcyon days of independent developers, particularly in Europe. They could be -and sometimes were- rockstars; which only made it more fun.
March 20, 2015
Another retro book that fell below my expectations, sadly...
To begin with, at least, the physical book itself is very nicely done for a change. Great quality paper and lovely fonts, colours and layout are a departure from the usual self-published, MS Word-set fare. That, however, is not without its problems. Footnotes are bizarrely and stupidly written sideways so that you have to tilt your head or the book sideways to read them (seriously, WHO THOUGHT OF THAT??!), and the fact that the screenshots are bundled together on different paper stock at the back of the book not only takes away lots of the fun but also forces you to continuously turn to the end to look at them. It doesn't work (and the fact that lots of pages don't have numbers on them so that you can find them easily makes it even worse). Screenshots, by the way, take up a LOT of space - text accounts for roughly half the book only.
So, content. It's not a traditional history book. It's all a collection of interviews with Sensible and other devs. While interviews are nice the outcome is a far cry from what a complete history should be, since it utterly lacks the outside critical view. Great source material, but interviews should be just that - source material.
These interviews are very interesting and you get to learn a lot, however Penn's writing style is... ugh. Penn is a veteran games journalist but he lets his ego shine through. His comments and notes are so pretentious and the way he sometimes speaks to the devs so patronizing that it's a bit obvious that he's trying to pass as knowledgeable insider instead of taking the back seat as he should. And some of his more 'poetic' flourishes made me roll my eyes.
All in all a worthwhile book for your collection, but it's a pity it didn't turn out much, much better as it could and should.
To begin with, at least, the physical book itself is very nicely done for a change. Great quality paper and lovely fonts, colours and layout are a departure from the usual self-published, MS Word-set fare. That, however, is not without its problems. Footnotes are bizarrely and stupidly written sideways so that you have to tilt your head or the book sideways to read them (seriously, WHO THOUGHT OF THAT??!), and the fact that the screenshots are bundled together on different paper stock at the back of the book not only takes away lots of the fun but also forces you to continuously turn to the end to look at them. It doesn't work (and the fact that lots of pages don't have numbers on them so that you can find them easily makes it even worse). Screenshots, by the way, take up a LOT of space - text accounts for roughly half the book only.
So, content. It's not a traditional history book. It's all a collection of interviews with Sensible and other devs. While interviews are nice the outcome is a far cry from what a complete history should be, since it utterly lacks the outside critical view. Great source material, but interviews should be just that - source material.
These interviews are very interesting and you get to learn a lot, however Penn's writing style is... ugh. Penn is a veteran games journalist but he lets his ego shine through. His comments and notes are so pretentious and the way he sometimes speaks to the devs so patronizing that it's a bit obvious that he's trying to pass as knowledgeable insider instead of taking the back seat as he should. And some of his more 'poetic' flourishes made me roll my eyes.
All in all a worthwhile book for your collection, but it's a pity it didn't turn out much, much better as it could and should.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews