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The Bitmap Brothers Universe
The Bitmap Brothers: Universe is a comprehensive history of the visionary British software house behind seminal titles such as Xenon 2: Megablast, Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe and The Chaos Engine. It combines an authoritative inside story, thoroughly researched via new, first-hand interviews with The Bitmap Brothers’ key figures – including founder Mike Montgomery and lead artist Dan Malone – with a breathtaking haul of never-before-seen archive material.
- GenresVideo GamesNonfiction
360 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 6, 2024
I've never played a game by The Bitmap Brothers (TBB) but I bought the book anyway because I've always been curious about the retro British gaming scene. One reason is because I had a couple of online British friends. Another is because in my experience, British retro fans can be nationalist jerks. The book contextualizes where that comes from: a big reason why TBB fell is that they simply couldn't thrive with how the Japanese & Americans completely reshaped the industry as 3D gaming took form and made game development so much more expensive. There's a whiff of "Us Brits had the real talent & passion, we just didn't have the resources!"
The book can be funny at times because TBB's founders had kind of a masculine, "come at me bro" attitude to them, by virtue of how close they were to the working-class. There's one anecdote where one of the programmers got so angry that he lit his computer on fire, which sounds like a joke out of The Angry Video Game Nerd. Another funny anecdote was how one of their games, "Xenon" was confused by much of the gaming press as a port of an arcade game (as opposed to something created first for British computers) because thats what a lot of British computer games were in that age. These anecdotes unfortunately recede as the company gets more corporatized.
There's a lot of detail in how the games were actually made. From creative influences, to game philosophy, to technological nitty-gritty. The book writers really did their research, and wanted to be very much authentic, to the point where they contracted a programmer to create a CRT shader so the printed images of the game would look like how they actually did on an 80s/90s computer screen. From the games discussed, the ones I'm most likely to play are the shoot em up "Xenon" & "The Chaos Engine" games, and the so-called "thinking man's platformer", "Gods". Their most popular hits were "Speedball", but I'm not too into sports games. I just gotta learn how to emulate British computers...
The book can be funny at times because TBB's founders had kind of a masculine, "come at me bro" attitude to them, by virtue of how close they were to the working-class. There's one anecdote where one of the programmers got so angry that he lit his computer on fire, which sounds like a joke out of The Angry Video Game Nerd. Another funny anecdote was how one of their games, "Xenon" was confused by much of the gaming press as a port of an arcade game (as opposed to something created first for British computers) because thats what a lot of British computer games were in that age. These anecdotes unfortunately recede as the company gets more corporatized.
There's a lot of detail in how the games were actually made. From creative influences, to game philosophy, to technological nitty-gritty. The book writers really did their research, and wanted to be very much authentic, to the point where they contracted a programmer to create a CRT shader so the printed images of the game would look like how they actually did on an 80s/90s computer screen. From the games discussed, the ones I'm most likely to play are the shoot em up "Xenon" & "The Chaos Engine" games, and the so-called "thinking man's platformer", "Gods". Their most popular hits were "Speedball", but I'm not too into sports games. I just gotta learn how to emulate British computers...
April 30, 2023
More than just an oral history of the Bitmap Brothers, this is a fascinating insight into the British videogame industry of the late 1980s and early '90s, a time when small teams and lone developers produced some iconic games from their bedrooms or tiny, chaotic, cheaply rented offices that would, by the end of the '90s, give way to a more 'professional' industry dominated by major publishers.
I was thirteen years old when Speedball 2 was released on the Amiga and the Atari ST and it's still my favourite game of all time. I spent countless hours on it as a teenager and came back to it several times, including playing the MegaDrive version, finally completing every mode on a Raspberry Pi in my early 40s (my thumbs hurt for weeks). It's probably fair to say I was always going to enjoy this book. And that's before I get into Xenon II: Megablast being my second favourite shoot 'em up ever - topped only by R-Type. Anyway...
This book is beautifully presented. It's a hefty but compact hardback, with a distinctive art style and format, and tons of screenshots of the Bitmaps' iconic art style. It's also well-written, mixes interview quotes with a solid narrative history that chronicles the Bitmaps' rise to being genuine pop culture names, the birth of Renegade and the company's demise amidst rapid technological and cultural change in the industry.
My only minor criticisms would be that the chapters on the Bitmaps' biggest successes feel too short and light on detail, compared to the more in-depth chapters on the last few years and some of the characters being written about aren't always clearly identified. But there's some tremendous anecdotes, including one about Bullfrog's Peter Molyneux who may or may not have thought he was Jesus at one point.
This is an essential book for anyone who enjoyed a Bitmap Brothers game, or has an interest in the history of gaming.
I was thirteen years old when Speedball 2 was released on the Amiga and the Atari ST and it's still my favourite game of all time. I spent countless hours on it as a teenager and came back to it several times, including playing the MegaDrive version, finally completing every mode on a Raspberry Pi in my early 40s (my thumbs hurt for weeks). It's probably fair to say I was always going to enjoy this book. And that's before I get into Xenon II: Megablast being my second favourite shoot 'em up ever - topped only by R-Type. Anyway...
This book is beautifully presented. It's a hefty but compact hardback, with a distinctive art style and format, and tons of screenshots of the Bitmaps' iconic art style. It's also well-written, mixes interview quotes with a solid narrative history that chronicles the Bitmaps' rise to being genuine pop culture names, the birth of Renegade and the company's demise amidst rapid technological and cultural change in the industry.
My only minor criticisms would be that the chapters on the Bitmaps' biggest successes feel too short and light on detail, compared to the more in-depth chapters on the last few years and some of the characters being written about aren't always clearly identified. But there's some tremendous anecdotes, including one about Bullfrog's Peter Molyneux who may or may not have thought he was Jesus at one point.
This is an essential book for anyone who enjoyed a Bitmap Brothers game, or has an interest in the history of gaming.
February 7, 2021
I have noticed that I seem to enjoy books about videogames I hated or never played. I always loved the art in Bitmap Brothers games but don't remember their gameplay that fondly. Fortunately the art reproduced in this book is incredible -- Dan Malone remains one of my most worshipped pixel artists.
The origin stories of independent videogame developers are always interesting, too, and this is no exception. I could have used a bit more detail about their peak Amiga era and a little less about their waning through the Playstation era and beyond, but overall it's pretty interesting and explains a lot about those games and how they came to be.
The origin stories of independent videogame developers are always interesting, too, and this is no exception. I could have used a bit more detail about their peak Amiga era and a little less about their waning through the Playstation era and beyond, but overall it's pretty interesting and explains a lot about those games and how they came to be.
June 25, 2021
A really good read about the Bitmap Brothers studio.
Have to take umbridge about Speedball 2 though. The book claims the subtitle "Brutal Deluxe" is taken from an "early 90s House music track" when actually Nitro Deluxe's "This Brutal house" and "Let's get brutal" actually came out in 1986, featured heavily on several 1988 House music collections and also the artwork for the game by Dan Malone is dated 1989! Speedball 2 came out properly in 1991.
Have to take umbridge about Speedball 2 though. The book claims the subtitle "Brutal Deluxe" is taken from an "early 90s House music track" when actually Nitro Deluxe's "This Brutal house" and "Let's get brutal" actually came out in 1986, featured heavily on several 1988 House music collections and also the artwork for the game by Dan Malone is dated 1989! Speedball 2 came out properly in 1991.
July 1, 2017
If you grew up while playing Speedball 2: Brutal deluxe and want to know more about the rise and fall of the makers of it: The Bitmap Brothers, you should definitely read this book. Very informative and entertaining and also excellent quality of print, artwork, screenshots, etc. for book afficionados.
August 21, 2021
I really enjoy reading about small groups of creatives who made an impact in some specific arena. I hadn't heard of the Bitmap Brothers until this book (they're most well known in the UK), but they were really fun to learn about. The book is one of the most beautifully designed pieces of art I've seen. The writing had me a bit disoriented at first, but it improves greatly as the book moves on. It's a moving, funny, detailed portrait of a very distinctive group of video game designers. Hope more people get to pick it up.
April 18, 2021
Muy interesante y entretenido, con el contexto apropiado alrededor de cada videojuego y proyecto. Además la edición es muy bonita e impresa en España.
July 15, 2024
Un libro davvero interessante e ben realizzato su un pezzo di storia della mia adolescenza.
November 29, 2016
A quite enjoyable book and really a step forward in the domain of retro computing tomes.
When it was first announced I didn't think much about it because - ok, Bitmap Bros are Bitmap bros and some of their games shaped my early years, but the titles were rather few so I wouldn't think it would interest me much. But then I read the same publisher's Sensible book and loved it so much that I had to get the next one, too!
To begin with, the book is beautiful. Great paper (fantastic smell! :D ), lovely type, great layout and excellent print quality (the screenshots, especially, even though taken through emulation are darn near perfect). The covers are something I'd never seen before - hard cardboard, which gives an excellent feel. I was worried that after reading the book there'd have been smudges from my hands left on it, but no, it's still in perfect condition. Binding is really great too, I left it open face down all the time and nothing happened to it.
Content, then. It's great. It's an ideal combination of quotes from interviews and history writing - I recently read the Gremlin book which was purely interviews and it didn't help me any. The flow and writing is very nice, though Harris tends to be way overenthusiastic at times resulting in a couple of descriptions that made me cringe a little.
The structure of the book is good, but not perfect. As the story goes on and is reaching its end the book becomes more and more analytical, meaning that the space devoted to the later years (and demise) of BB takes a disproportionate amount of content, which is remarkable given that the early titles are those that have the most interest. One may argue that this is because Harris really goes into the why and how BB ultimately failed, and it is true, but he didn't devote the same attention to the factors behind the rise of the company, so that in the end it's not very balanced.
Not that it ever becomes uninteresting, of course, but it's something to bear in mind.
The book weighs in at around 340 pages, but this is a bit deceiving - there are a LOT of blank pages (each chapter is preceded by 4 non-content pages IIRC) and there are dozens of pages with a single screenshot on them.
Oh, there's also some artwork from the games development phases too, which is brilliant.
All in all, not a perfect book, but really great and a worthy addition to your collection.
When it was first announced I didn't think much about it because - ok, Bitmap Bros are Bitmap bros and some of their games shaped my early years, but the titles were rather few so I wouldn't think it would interest me much. But then I read the same publisher's Sensible book and loved it so much that I had to get the next one, too!
To begin with, the book is beautiful. Great paper (fantastic smell! :D ), lovely type, great layout and excellent print quality (the screenshots, especially, even though taken through emulation are darn near perfect). The covers are something I'd never seen before - hard cardboard, which gives an excellent feel. I was worried that after reading the book there'd have been smudges from my hands left on it, but no, it's still in perfect condition. Binding is really great too, I left it open face down all the time and nothing happened to it.
Content, then. It's great. It's an ideal combination of quotes from interviews and history writing - I recently read the Gremlin book which was purely interviews and it didn't help me any. The flow and writing is very nice, though Harris tends to be way overenthusiastic at times resulting in a couple of descriptions that made me cringe a little.
The structure of the book is good, but not perfect. As the story goes on and is reaching its end the book becomes more and more analytical, meaning that the space devoted to the later years (and demise) of BB takes a disproportionate amount of content, which is remarkable given that the early titles are those that have the most interest. One may argue that this is because Harris really goes into the why and how BB ultimately failed, and it is true, but he didn't devote the same attention to the factors behind the rise of the company, so that in the end it's not very balanced.
Not that it ever becomes uninteresting, of course, but it's something to bear in mind.
The book weighs in at around 340 pages, but this is a bit deceiving - there are a LOT of blank pages (each chapter is preceded by 4 non-content pages IIRC) and there are dozens of pages with a single screenshot on them.
Oh, there's also some artwork from the games development phases too, which is brilliant.
All in all, not a perfect book, but really great and a worthy addition to your collection.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews