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A few months later a new company was formed called Finchspeed. It was started by Imagine Software cofounder David Lawson and Ian Hetherington, who had been Imagine Software's Financial Officer. It also had many of the Imagine Software programmers such as Eugene Evans working there.

They would switch their development from the 8-Bit computers and instead focus on the 16-Bit Atari ST and Amiga. Taking their work done on Psyclapse and Bandersnatch, and combine them in to a new game called Brataccas. Of course on the 16-Bit systems, they had no concerns of needing any additional hardware to run the game.

By 1986 they had finished their game, they now just needed a new company name that encapsulated all they were trying to convey with their new company.

What’s in a name?

They initially decided to have two names for their new publishing house.

Psygnosis, taken from the Latin Psy, meaning mind and Gnosis, meaning advanced knowledge, it was a cool sounding name, that they would use for their adventure and strategy style games.

To distinguish their action based games they would go under the different name Psyclapse, this was an obvious nod in respect of their Imagine Software roots, and the C64 game never released withthe same name. They would drop the name Psyclapse entirely by 1990.

Right from the beginning, Psygnosis thought big, going to the ground breaking, world famous record cover artist Roger Dean to design their new companies logo and font. Roger Dean had been at the forefront of revolutionising the record album covers during the 70’s and 80’s, and now Psygnosis hoped he would do the same for the games industry as well.

In a Retro Gamer interview, Roger Dean briefly spoke on how he was approached, what Psygnosis asked for and how he went about designing the now famous logo..

“It was a very obvious thing, that for me. They kept throwing names at me and in the end I did the name and logo. They wanted something that said ‘knowledge’, ‘the future’, ‘wisdom’, ‘fun’ [NO SUCH RELEASE]. So the owl has to be the obvious choice. Not the only choice, but it was the obvious choice. And having this very chrome-robotic owl, was a way of having a futuristic owl.”

Risen up from the ashes…

Psygnosis first game Brataccaswas released in 1986. It was an ambitious graphic adventure game, with a lot of charm and humour within it. The games story involves you playing Kyne, a scientist framed for a crime he did not commit, by the evil Government. The government set him up, when he refuses to share how he made the process to create a super being.

The game itself is very much in the old 8-Bit style of wandering endless mazes. I suppose for its age, the game isn’t bad, but without a nostalgia cushion to play the game, the game hasn’t aged well.

The controls are horrible on default settings, as it is with the mouse which is unplayable. To get this game half playable, press the Page Down key (if emulating , or Help Key on an Amiga) and then press F6 to change your controls to the keyboard (it’s still awful to control, but at least you have a fighting chance).

Still one thing you can say thanks to the beautiful box artwork of Roger Dean, the game would look a bit special.

Brataccaswas an ambitious game for its time, but it was let down with regards to the poor in game controls. Still with Roger Dean brought in to do the box artwork, it would make the game deeply exciting to gamers browsing the game shelves of their local Boots or WH Smiths.

16-Bit Days

Psygnosis would continue to release many games. They were going strong, with early hits such as Terropodsbeing included as part of the Ten Star bundle pack, that came with most new Amiga’s. Also there was the game Barbarian winning some gamers over.

At this time Psygnosis was already making a name for itself as a company that’s games had amazing graphics, and that was built ground up for the Amiga and Atari-ST computers. This was important as most other companies were still focussed on the 8-Bit market, with the 16-Bit computers only receiving (often poor) up-scaled versions of 8-Bit games. This would therefore distinguish them from their competitors.

The first game though to really put them on the map, was by a newly formed Scottish developer, who would show them the game Menace. This was a ground breaking shoot-’em-up for the time, offering arcade quality graphics and gameplay in the home (or so it seemed at the time).

DMA Design (better known today as RockstarNorth) was set up by former school friends David Jones, Russell Kay ,Steve Hammond and Mike Daily. They had met way back in 1983 at Dundee's Kingsway amateur Computer club. David Jones who was older than the rest had been made redundant at Timex, and so knowing game programming was what he wanted to do he used his redundancy money on an Amiga 1000.

As shoot-’em-up fans and gamers they would eventually start writing their own games, with early titles like Russell’s Kay’s game Zone and Mike Daily’ game FreekOut.

David Jones meanwhile was working on a game called CopperCon-1, under the development house name Acme. The game was inspired by his favourite Konami arcade blaster Salamander. He would show his game to various publishers, such as Hewson, who showed an interest to use it as an 16-bit conversion of their own game Zynaps, but David not wanting this continued to look.

Psygnosis liked the game however and readily signed it up. With the guys now all working on it, and realising the name Acme was already taken, they needed a new development house name. Various names were suggested like Alias Smith And Jones and Visual Voyage, but eventually they all decided on DMA Design. This stood for Direct Memory Access or Doesn’t Mean Anything.

Mike Daily fondly remembers those times..

“I had just been thrown out of college and didn’t know what I was going to be doing, and then all of a sudden I get handed my dream job! My mother thought I was crazy and wasting my time since it was a bedroom industry at the time, but I didn’t care I was a real game developer and was even getting paid.”

CopperCon-1 on release became the much cooler sounding name called Menace.

Menace would get reasonable reviews with most giving it around 75%, noting the fine graphics but finding the actual gameplay lacking excitement.

Still

Still it was a major release and would put both DMA Design and Psygnosis on the map.

Mike Daily remembers on his fantastic website

‘Dave Started Blood Money on the 4th of January 1989 with his shiny new 25 MHz 386-DX PC, complete with a PDS (Personal Development System) that let him sqirtthe compiled code over to the Amiga in an instant!

Psygnosis, happy with Menace, had sent Dave a new toy, and he was keen to show it off. Compared to his A1000, this system was fast...very fast. The entire code would compile almost before your finger left the keyboard.’

Blood Money was finished in that same year, being inspired by another favourite shooter of David, Mr. Heli by Irem. Ray Norirshwas hired to do the fantastic music for Blood Money. Many consider this to be one of the best tunes on the Amiga.

Blood Money was another great blaster, with really four different shooters combined together, each with their own unique craft and level design. Magazine CVG gave.

It85% saying ‘A smidge more variety would have helped the quality of the gameplay match that of the graphics and sound more closely, but there’s still no denying that Blood Money is a damned good blast. Definitely one of the best games of its type on the Amiga to date.’

But it wasn’t just DMA Design that Psygnosis would give their first break to. Another was Reflections, who would do many games for Psygnosis over the years, beginning with Ballistix and of course the Shadow of the Beast games. They then would later go on to do Destruction Derby and the Driver series. Reflections founder Martin Edmondson reminisces about his first introduction to Psygnosis…

“I remember taking a completed Ballistix and an early tech demo of Shadow of the Beast down to show

them, way back when it was based in the old Robert Smith Metals Building on the Dock road. A far cry from the huge glass Wavertree Tech park that came later.”

Ballistix sold well enough, with above average reviews. Although the game was essentially a computerised version of the Crossfire board game, and so failed to excite. CU Amiga gave it 76% saying ‘up to the usual excellent standards of Psygnosis’s releases, but being based on a game that’s about fifteen years old, it’s hardly likely to be original. We’re waiting for the computer version of Mousetrap next.’

Still Martin Edmondson was already working on another game, that was going to show gamers what their 16-Bit

machines were really capable of. Called Shadow of the Beast, it came about after Martin Edmondson had

been reading Addison-Wesley Amiga Hardware Reference Manual on parallax scrolling.

It would sell incredibly well, even at the eye wateringly £35 (although it did include a free Roger Dean T-Shirt).

Some may have criticised it, for being all style and no substance, but it was exactly what Amiga starved gamers were clambering for at the time. Software that would show off their new hardware.

Zzap gave it 83% noting it was ‘very nice to look at, very tough to play and very expensive.’

Reflections would start to work on a sequel immediately, with a definite aim of not changing the game thematically or in any drastic way, and so instead concentrate on it’s gameplay and increasing the complexity of the original design.

The first Beast game had been severely restricted by all the graphical wizardry taking place. So for the sequel they would design a completely new scrolling system, that although was less impressive graphically –fewer colours, less parallax –allowed the game to scroll in many directions, and crucially have sprites moving pretty freely anywhere they wanted in the scenery. This of course, freed up the game design restrictions, so they were able to design interesting puzzles into the game.

For the music sadly David Whittaker, who had done the original was unavailable, so they enlisted the talents of a new game musician called Tim Wright.

Tim Wright reminisces in a Square EnixMusic interview..

“After being asked to write the score forBeast 2, I listened to David's work on the original Shadow of the Beastas a yardstick of 'I have to do this well and more' which felt like a daunting proposal. David was one of my all time music heroes, so to be stepping into his shoes was both thrilling and terrifying.

Martin Edmondson from Reflections was very hands-on when it came to the music. He had strong ideas about what the music should sound like... even down to which samples he would like to hear included from a KORG M1 Synthesizer. Luckily, I had a close friend who had that exact synth, so we set to work sampling Martin's sounds, along with others that I thought might work well. The style was pretty much indicated by the originalShadow of the Beast, but I wanted to expand upon that and make it darker and more like a film score than the previous game.

Another friend, Steve Nuttallwho I'd worked with atLittlewoods, was a pretty talented guitarist, and I wanted some electric solo guitar in a couple of the pieces: the title theme, and the game over theme. The title theme was cobbled together from around an hours worth of guitar playing as an original piece, whereas the game over music was copied from

a cassette tape that Martin had sent me, with the instructions "copy this...". Many years later, it emerged that the game over tune I'd copied was a small section from one episode of Miami Vice! Oddly enough, this small piece was also written by a guy called Tim.”

Shadow of the Beast 2 was released in November 1990 and would sell by the bucket load. Also being included with an Amiga game bundle called Screen Gems. So many gamers (myself included) would get this technical showcase of a game.

Reviewers of the time were mostly favourable. Amiga Action gave the game 84% saying…

‘The graphics are just as good as Beast and the sound is brilliant, but the gameplay is much, much better and from the starting position there are tons of different ways to go. The game is quite hard but you soon comes to terms with it, and get that little bit further each time. The only problem I could find with the game was the loading system. Each time you die you have to wait about one minute before you can play again and this really breaks up the game. However the game is mega and it’s a must, even if it is a bit pricey.’

Not all were so favourable however CVG gave it 59%saying

‘Hmmm. Not really that bad, but un-user friendly gameplay isn’t hidden by the brilliant visuals.’

In October 1992, Reflections would release Shadow of the Beast 3. This time Reflections had continued to listen to gamer feedback, making it the strongest game in the series.

Reviews were mostly positive, giving scores in the 90% or high 80% bracket. Stuart Campbell at Amiga Power gave it 71%criticising the games shortness of just four stages, but enjoying the game.. He writes..

‘It looks good, it sounds good, and the gameplay is good, but you’ll have to decide for yourself whether it is worth 15 quid a week. Me? I’m not so sure.’

The game however failed to sell as well as the previous two games, with other Amiga's developers catching up with Reflections technical wizardry at this point. Also many gamers associated the Shadow of the Beast games, with looking pretty but not great to play.

Which is a pity as the third instalment is quite an enjoyable game, light years away from its predecessors in the gameplay department.

Martin Edmondson reminisces on his time doing the Beast games

“If I am honest, it was less exciting than the first. Beast 1 was our first dedicated Amiga game, it was earlier in the machine’s life, and it was really pushing the graphics hardware to the limit. When you get used to a machine and what it can do, some of the magic fades and you’re starting to think about what new machine is around the corner.”

Another great game and prestigious developer who got their first big break with Psygnosis was Raising Hell Software. Who of course are better known today as Bizarre Creations and their MSR and Project Gotham games (Incidentally the name change came about when Sega bought the company and had a problem with having a developer with the word Hell in the title).

Raising Hell was set up in 1987, in the North West of England by Martin Chudley. He would send in his demo of a game he was working on and Psygnosis snapped it up right away.

That game was called The Killing Game Show and it was released in January 1990. It was a stunning shooter that had you control a walking robot, who must shoot anything that moves whilst making its way to the top of the arena to the exit, all this as the water constantly rises (Think of Rainbow Islands meets the movie Robocop.)

Reviews of the time loved the game, noting its severe toughness, but wowing at the visuals and smooth gameplay. Amiga Format gave it 92% saying..

‘Just when you thought all the polish and ideas in shoot-‘em-ups belonged to arcade conversions and big licenses, along come Psygnosis with another audio-visual gem to delight your eyes and ears. Moreover, it isn’t just all flash and no go –the gameplay is superb too. The action is frantic, the puzzles are difficult and it has a hook which could wind in a killer shark. Watch the superb intro, then play the game and be blown away!’

But back to DMA Design. Although they had some reasonable success with both Menace and Blood Money games (Menace sold a total of 20,000 and Blood Money 40,000 copies), they were hardly what you consider hitting the big time. All that was about to change on Valentines day 1991 (14thFeb), with a release of a certain game called Lemmings.

The game came about when Scott Johnson set about trying to make the smallest game sprites he could. The sprites were still 16x16 pixels and so Mike Daily commented he could shrink them to 8x8 and set about to show it. So over an hour lunchtime he did a group of little guys getting squished by a weight.

Gary Simmons made some additional parts to the animation with the chewing mouth and better drawn characters, as can be seen to the right of the chewing mouth.

Russell Kay commented there was a game in these little critters and started calling them lemmings, and so armed with this idea the team started to make the game.

At the early demo stage DMA had originally been turned down by Psygnosis and other developers, as they couldn’t see a viable game. But DMA undeterred continued regardless without a publisher, confident that there was a good game here.

Once they had designed some levels and showed the game to Psygnosis, they finally understood it and snapped up the rights to publish it. The game was released to universal critical acclaim with most magazines giving 90% plus…

Amiga Format gave the game 92%saying…

‘Lemmings is a hoot to play and quickly becomes a dangerous obsession. Four different styles are available plus two-player mode. All call for a clear head and a cool hand if you are to finish a level and gain the next password. They’re over 160 levels, each of which has more than one solution. You must decide the best way to solve a level, given the commands available, and any favoured personal approach. There is, as the old saying goes, more than one way to explode a lemming.’

Lemmings managed to sell 55,000 copies on it first day of release.

John White, Software Director remembers.

“I was project manager onLemmings, for instance, so I used to fly up to Dundee on a regular basis –the guys knew what they were doing but sometimes needed a steer. We funded and equipped them and provided expertise in terms of growth. We reaped the rewards by having exclusive rights and, in the case ofLemmings, I remember going to a German trade event knowing we had the hit of the show. There was a standard contract –Lemmingsbelonged to Psygnosis, not the developer. We provided the funding and the creative input on their idea and they got a royalty.”

Lemmings was a massive hit for Psygnosis with the game being a Worldwide phenomenon. Needless to say DMA would produce a string of sequels to Lemmings. With Oh No! More Lemmings, Lemmings 2, All New Word of Lemmings, 3D Lemmings and Lemmings Revolution, although none matched the beautiful simplicity of the original.

Another great game developer given their first break was Art and Magic. Frank Sauer, who did the stunning art work for the game, has done a wonderful write up on his website. I have included quite a bit unaltered from his web site (hope he doesn’t mind)…

After finishing Unreal, we started working on a new project for the Amiga, code namedTwilightthat was supposed to be a sequel to Unreal. Yanncould not be part of it because he had been called for serving military duties. So we were three left: Marc Albinet, Yves Groletand I. Because Yves would be the only programmer in the team we had to limit the scope of the game. Marc had been working on a shoot'emup on the C64 before (Iliad) and suggested we do such a game because it was a somewhat easier type to make. Well, except we would again push the boundaries of the Amiga to the limits and make it a pretty complicated development anyways.

The way we split work was as follow, Marc would work on levels 2,3 and 5. I would do levels 1,4 and 6. We didn't want to do spaceships or futuristic settings. We decided it would be some fantasy settings in natural environment. We would explore all the classic themes: Sea, lava, swamps and so on.

As we were aiming for the best shoot-’em-up on the Amiga, we talked about how to add even more value to the product. At the time, we were very impressed by the Shadows of the Beast series. Their games had some of the best intros of all games, with beautifully animated back-stories. So we decided Marc would do a complete animated sequence for the introduction and back-story of our game. On my side, I would do 6 paintings, one for introducing each level during load time.

We then started working on a prototype. It was like a race. The race for the largest number of parallax scrolling planes. They had a lot in SOTB, but they wouldn't overlap, it was much like the sky in the 3D parts of Unreal.

The Amiga hardware was capable of 2 playing fields that could overlap, and there were many games using that feature. However, Yves devised a way to provide more overlapping planes, and developed a prototype with 3 full screen of parallax scrolling. That was truly awesome, something nobody had ever seen on the Amiga, it gave an incredible sense of depth.

When we started pitching Agony in 1991, we were showing our latest game Unreal at the ECTS (European Computer Trade Show)inLondon.Steve Riding, producer at Psygnosis came to our booth (actually Ubisoftbooth) and we showed him a prototype of Agony off-stage. He was very impressed and invited Yves and I to a dinner the same evening, he wanted the game badly. You have to realize all the stars of development at the time were signed by Psygnosis, such as Reflections or DMA. Being part of that family would have been incredible for us, we thought.

Even with the language barrier (we barely spoke English at the time) we understood each other, and during the dinner we realized we both shared the same vision of where the game should be heading to. Of course Steve had well prepared that meeting and greeted us with bags full of Psygnosis goodies. Ah, those were the days. When we left, we had large smiles on our faces. The project was signed a few days later.

From there, we changed the name to Agony (we were looking for a name starting with letter A, so that it would be on top of the retailers lists), and we used an Owl as the main character because we thought it would be very cool. This was our choice, not Psygnosis.

We had been working with Jeroen Tel of Maniacs of noise on other games before, and I wanted an orchestral score for the game. He came to my place and we discussed about our needs and constraints and showed him the prototype. Jeroen would gladly provide the ingame orchestral and bombastic music for the game. Psygnosis provided the game with even more added value by contracting virtually all the best musicians of the time to make music contribution for the loading parts and intro, that was just insane.

When I look back at this game, it strikes me how free we were to design a game that really was a piece of personal work. Steve’ sonly interaction with us was to help us increase the quality even further to reach Psygnosis standards. He helped us to contract some of the best musicians of the time, and Tim Wright’ sincredible intropiano piece is atribute to that. This is incomplete opposition with today’s publishers and their corporate culture, trying to impose their Always changing ‘vision’ or strategic marketing bullshit. The result is Agony is often regarded as a piece of art, and regularly cited among the best looking Amiga titles, and I’m really proud of that.

Not all was rosy though, and as the game was taking shape, Steve gave us some bad news. It would already take three disks to store the game and it was not possible to include the introductory animation. Adding more disk would have made the manufacturing costs prohibitive. We were sorry for Marc who had already been working a lot on thea nimations.

At the end of the project, Yves was called for his military service too, and the project unfortunately got delayed several times until its final release in 1992.Unfortunately, the Amiga was no longer the ultimate machine as the 16 bits consoles were once again gaining ground and the multimedia PC was on the horizon, hence the limited commercial success of the game despite its cult status.

John White was employee number eight at Psygnosis, and it was his job to manage the third party teams of the games mentioned.

In an Edge interview he reminisces of his time at Psygnosis. For the full interview please go here

“Those early days were absolutely fantastic, with lots of travelling. The developers were trying to pull the wool over our eyes, but we knew what was going on. I was tasked with identifying and nurturing new talent and to encourage the art side. Ian Hetherington was the creative talent and the guy behind the whole thing –it was his vision that drove Psygnosis.”

“We had offices in the Steel Foundry –a couple of rooms in a dirty part of Liverpool. I came out of the office every day and the car, a company Cavalier, was covered in crap. Psygnosis was part-owned by Robert Smith, who also owned the local Mercedes dealership and the Steel Foundry. Ian and Jonathan Ellis did a deal, a management buyout to take the company and the stock. In return Robert was paid a royalty on everything for a while.”

“I remember going to early shows, taking the stock and coming back with tens of thousands of pounds. All I did was speak to devsand programmers and try to recruit them. Ian and Jonathan turned the company around and followed their vision, picking up lots of IP.”

There was of course tons of other games Psygnosis released on the Amiga and Atari-ST and far too many to mention in detail here.. But don’t worry they all will be mentioned in the third section of this book where every Psygnosis games are listed and described. So I guarantee your favourite Psygnosis game will be there.

In summary. For the Amiga and Atari-ST days of Psygnosis, there was some guaranteed things expected in the early days, when you bought a Psygnosis game.

•It would have a really impressive intro, that probably took up a floppy disk all by itself.

•It would have snazzy graphics, amazing sound and would be a great game to show-off to your console owning mates.

•You could guarantee it would come in a massive game box and would have a stunning Roger Dean cover on the front.

•It would have either a free poster or T-Shirt.

•The game would cost you an eye watering £35.

•Chances are the actual game, probably wasn’t that great

Learning CD

Psygnosis was always looking to the future and so as far back as 1991 they had set up a dedicated team to look at future technologies.

Called the Psygnosis Advance Technology Group. The team would create the Psyggy’sFull Motion Video (FMV) technology or clever way of CD streaming data.

The first fruits of the labours was released in October 1993 for FM Towns Marty and Sega Mega CD, with CD32, PC and 3DO to be released in May the following year.

Pitched as a shoot-’em-up that crosses Afterburner with the movie Fantastic Voyage. It was a ground breaking game visually right from its 400 second long intro, with live actors , and scenes that had been rendered by £10,000+ Silicon graphics engine and a file server worth of hard drives to store the massive 6.5 Gigabytes needed to store the non compressed intro.

Everything about the game’s development was excessive, the initial development was predicted to cost $600,000 to $750,000 an astronomical figure for a game for the time.

Also the music was also impressive, with former Yes front man Rick Wakemandoing original music for the game after meeting Psygnosis at a concert.

Despite all the high production values, the actual game wasn’t actually that good, with overly simplistic gameplay and was accused of being ‘all show and no go’.

Still, as a gamer of the time, I can attest first hand, how exciting it all seemed, watching the new possibilities that the new CD format could provide.

Amiga Format I believe summed it up best when they gave it 87% saying

‘The future of computer games is here. This may not be the most playable ever, but it will go down in history asan entertainment milestone.’ Jeff Bramfittan artist on Microcosm Remembers what it was like to work for Psygnosis during this perioid.

“It was an exciting place to work, because everyone was excited about the new possibilities unfolding before us. In effect it was a totally new medium, with vast potential and we were suddenly the leading edge.”

The early Psygnosis CD games weren’t very good it is true. But there was no denying that Psygnosis was ahead of the curve when using the new medium that was CD, and that interested a lot of people…

..including Sony.

Playstation Era

Taken from PR Newswire Archive on May 22 1993–

On May 22nd1993 Sony Electronic Publishing Company acquired the Liverpool-based computer and video game software developer and publisher PsygnosisLtd., a recognized leader in video game and CD-ROM products. The acquisition of Psygnosissignificantly enhances Sony Electronic Publishing's in-house development capabilities. Psygnosiswill continue to market and distribute computer software under the Psygnosisbrand, as well as develop software for Sony Electronic Publishing's video game division, Olaf Olafsson, president of Sony Electronic Publishing and Sony Imagesoft. "Psygnosisand its management will play an integral role in the development of industry-leading interactive entertainment, as well as our expansion into Europe." "We are delighted and very excited at the prospect of working with Sony Electronic Publishing, a company whose name and reputation is synonymous with innovation and technical excellence," said Jonathan Ellis, managing director -publishing, Psygnosis. "The alliance of two such highly complementary companies will enable us to benefit from each other's strengths and talents, and continue our growth and market penetration within the home entertainment industry worldwide." "Working together with a company of Sony's reputation will allow us to build and develop further our reputation as pioneers in the innovative medium of CD technology, taking the bounds of home entertainment beyond anyone's current expectations," said Ian Hetherington, managing director -development, Psygnosis. "This new association with Sony Electronic Publishing will give us access to a spectacular range of development projects, and represents the culmination of all our earlier achievements." Jonathan Ellis and Ian Hetherington will continue to serve as co-managing directors of Psygnosis.

Suddenly Psygnosis had been sold, with Sony owning a 50% interest in the company.

It made sense from Sony’s point of view as they would have half of one of the premium game Publishers in the world, and who were at the forefront of understanding how to use the CD as a gaming medium. Meanwhile at Psygnosis, it made total sense as they were able to carry on as before, not even being locked down to just releasing games on Sony’s hardware.

John White describes to Edge why Sony bought Psygnosis..

“Psygnosis was acquired by Sony America, not Sony Japan who had the electronics. America saw the buy strategically as acquiring games content to complement their film and TV content. Sony America wanted to acquire a game content provider to marry up with the hardware. That was the original thinking. I’m sure there was a lot of politics involved, but they were trying to create a rounded company.

The conversations were between Ian and Jonathan and SCEA, but once the acquisition had gone through I was utilised to a small extent in the setting up of SCEE. They had Phil Harrison on the ground and we were tasked with finding offices and getting it going. After six months of trying to work out what we were doing the political situation changed I was put back into Psygnosis and Phil into SCE.”

The first game released for the Playstationby Psygnosis was really rather special..

Called WipEoutand released in August 1995, it was a futuristic racer, taking the idea from the Bullfrog Amiga game Powerdrome, Nintendo's F-Zero and even Mario Kart, updated with oodles of cool for a new PlayStation generation of gamers.

Lee Carusan artist on WipEoutremembers in a Retro Gamer Interview how this seminal game came about..

“I believe it started out as a drunken conversation between Nick Burcombeand a former colleague of his Jim Bowers in a pub called the ShrewsberryArms in Oxton, Birkenhead”

This conversation resulted in Jim Bowers to set to work on a first concept movie that impressed the Psygnosis managers enough to immediately have the project green lit.

It took the WipEoutteam only 14 months to do the game, an extremely tight deadline for only a ten person team.

Combined with the awesome collection of techno and dance tunes by artists of the time, it perfectly re-captured the young adults who had grown out of gaming and showed them gaming was for them again. It can be argued therefore that WipEoutwas one of the most important games for the PlayStation and a cornerstone to its worldwide success.

Such a successful game would naturally produce many sequels and it is testament to Psygnosis that each new game in the series genuinely pushed the boundaries each time, improving the game still further with every iteration. Because of this WipEouthas continued to be a worldwide gaming favourite and a jewel in Sony’s PlayStation game library. In fact it would be a WipEoutgame that would be SCE Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) last before they sadly shut their doors in 2012.

Another classic Psygnosis game would also be released on the 31stOctober 1995 for the PlayStation. This time the game would be done by Reflections and a kind of driving game.

Called Destruction Derby it was a wonderful alternative racing game, that was like the real Destruction Derbies and so just as much about smashing into one another as it was to cross the finish line.

The game was dreamt up by Martin Edmondson and Michael Troughtonwho, as fans of the real derbies thought it would make a great fun game. Psygnosis green lit the ameand they successfully delivered in writing the game in only nine months.

Martin reminisces to Retro Gamer in an interview

“It was an exciting time with the Sony takeover of Psygnosis and the buzz about the new PlayStation Hardware.”

“I remember some of the guys from the Psygnosis had to cover their badges at tradeshows as they were swamped, like paparazzi swarm around celebrities.”

With two premium PlayStation projects within Psygnosis it would be a natural that a friendly competitive rivalry would occur between the WipEoutand Reflections team, and this rivalry, to push the PlayStation hardware undoubtedly helped make both games, be the best they can be.

Martin remembers on first showing the game to Sony’s Ken Kutaragi

“He flew over with a team of engineers and I was demonstrating the game to him. He was very enthusiastic and smiled a lot, but his only actual comment was that it was a great shame that all the debris from the cars didn’t stay on the track. I remember thinking (but didn’t say obviously) Surely you realise how hard we are pushing your hardware here without leaving bits of debris all over the track! He was right though, if only we could have done it.”

Destruction Derby was a great game, and for those at the time who criticised it simplistic nature, misses the whole point of the game. It is supposed to be low brow, a bit of unadulterated fun, and it is that the game successfully has in spades.

John Gibson a Psygnosis software manager details in an interview with Retro Gamer the reasons that Sony started to take complete control over from Psygnosis and Ian Hetherington.

“Those days were still the halcyon days of game development, the Imagine mentality still existed. A handful of very expensive cars could always be found in the carparkand every man and his dog had a company car.”

“Inevitably this lifestyle could not last and when Sony realised it’d been pumping millions in and getting very little out, it moved quickly to first of all vote Ian Hetherington off of the board and then shut down all the satellite studios. In a few short years, Psygnosis had gone full circle. Only now it was no longer Psygnosis but SCEE.”

Jeff Bramfitt(artist on Microcosm) also laments on what started to go wrong with Psygnosis.

“Things started to go down hill after Sony took over, constantly changing management who became more detached from production and more interested in career points, stifled creativity and confidence.”

John White (Software Manager at Psygnosis) considers for an Edge Interview what went wrong with Psygnosis.

“When I joined every year we doubled in size. We got up to 400 and Ian said, "Next year, it’s 800". You think you’ve grown organically, but at the end of the day, despite having a strategy, we didn’t handle growth as well as we could have done out of lack of experience. Things got out of control. Wipeout was one of the last generation of games where what we were doing was working. Things went wrong because we were so successful and then new management was brought in.

For me, things had gone horribly wrong. I had six absolutely wonderful years and the last two years were not good. Eventually I realised what was wrong and told Ian we were lacking management training and our inexperience was causing problems. He said: "You’re right, but it’s too late." I was side-lined, doing a different job and not enjoying life.”

Psygnosis would go on to publish many classic games for the gaming world, whether it was the DiscWorldgames, the ground breaking Colony Wars, G-Police or even the Bizarre Creation’s impressive Formula One games before they would join Sega and then Microsoft and do the Project Gotham games.

Even in 2000 when Sony changed the name from

Psygnosis to SCE Studio Liverpool they continued

to release quality games that was well regarded by

both gamers and the gaming press

Don’t worry all those games are covered the following section where I have painstakingly detailed every game Psygnosis have released (or I hope everything, I bet some smart person out there will flag one or more I missed.)

End of an Era…

On the 22ndAugust 2012 Sony confirmed rumours that SCE Studios Liverpool, formerly known as Psygnosis had been shut down.

Sony gave the following statement at the time…

"As part of SCE Worldwide Studios, we do regular reviews to ensure that the resources we have can create and produce high quality, innovative and commercially viable projects in an increasingly competitive marketplace. As part of this process, we have reviewed and assessed all current and planned projects for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to our European Studios.

"It has been decided that Liverpool Studio should be closed. Liverpool Studio has been an important part of SCE Worldwide Studios since the outset of PlayStation, and have contributed greatly to PlayStation over the years. Everyone connected with Liverpool Studio, past and present, can be very proud of their achievements.

"However, it was felt that by focusing our investment plans on other Studios that are currently working on exciting new projects, we would be in a stronger position to offer the best possible content for our consumers.

"Our Liverpool Facility will continue to operate, housing a number of other vital WWSE and SCEE Departments.

"This should not take anything away from the great work WWS are doing and the incredible games and services that we have made, and continue to make, both for this coming year and further in the future.“

Psygnosis 1984 –2012 You will be sorely missed.

Original resource here, including all artwork.