Psygnosis, The Playstation Years - It's a pixel thing - Ep.#84

Hey, guys! Welcome back! As you know, Sony acquired Psygnosis, the perfect ally for their World domination! So, let’s take a look at Psygnosis’ PlayStation Years! Once more, I have to clarify a pronunciation issue: I received a comment from Mr. Nick Burcombe, the lead designer of WipEout, who firmly stated that, and I quote: “I can guarantee – it’s pronounced “sig-no-sis””. “That synthetic intro voice-over saying “Psygnosis Presents” was actually wrong.” This new video is Part #2 of Pixel THING’s episode #82 about the early years of Psygnosis, so, if you haven’t already watched it, do it now. As you know, Nintendo and Sony were working together for a future CD add-on to this next gen system. But observing the breach of contract from Nintendo and the disavowal from Sega, Sony decided to create his own home console and advance into this uncharted territory of video game development by acquiring Psygnosis, in May 22nd of 1993, to enhance Sony’s in-house development capabilities, ‘cause they knew that the Liverpool based software publisher was making progresses with their own CD technology research. The deal made total sense to Psygnosis, ‘cause they weren’t locked down making games exclusively for Sony. Despite 50% of Psygnosis being owned by Sony, they were free to develop and publish games for other platforms, like the PC, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64. So, while developing software for Sony, Psygnosis would continue to market and distribute games under the Psygnosis brand, and would play a major role in Sony’s expansion into Europe. Meanwhile, Psyclapse was silently abandoned, being its latest releases: Anarchy, a pretty decent and updated version of the classic arcade game Defender; and Matrix Marauders, Spell Bound and Stryx, these three with nothing really astonishing to point out, besides the amazing covers. Between that period of time, and prior to the PlayStation release, Psygnosis published many other awesome titles from which I must highlight: Hired Guns, from DMA Design, that is an awesome Dungeon Master clone, set in the future, that can be played between one to four players on a single machine; a pretty fun and absorbing adventure game by the name of Innocent Until Caught; the obvious sequels to Lemmings: Lemmings 2: The Tribes and All New World of Lemmings; the Amiga version of The Second Samurai, by the great Raffaele Cecco, and the sequel to First Samurai that I’ve already reviewed on my channel; Brian the Lion, an Amiga exclusive platform title that, by 1994, was better than everything else in the genre across all systems available by then; and an exclusive 3D action-adventure game for MS-DOS that was really ahead of its time: Ecstatica. The deal with Sony allowed Psygnosis certain tools for creating a dedicated development system for the PlayStation curiously based on PC hardware, simpler and cheaper. From those exclusive research and development initial years, Psygnosis came up with two amazing franchises: Destruction Derby and WipEout. Destruction Derby, developed by Reflections Interactive and directed by Martin Edmondson, creator of Shadow of the Beast, recalls in an interview that showing their first PlayStation game to Ken Kutaragi, the man considered as the father of the PlayStation itself, was quite amusing! He flew from Japan with a team of engineers to test, first hand, one of the most important launch titles for Europe. Kutaragi smiled a lot and was really enthusiastic and his one and only comment was that: "It would be great that the debris from the cars stayed on the track!" The hardware was already pushed to its maximum, so it was a daunting task just to think about doing it! Nonetheless, the game was a huge success and, along with WipEout, helped to cement PlayStation’s supremacy. Just before Destruction Derby, by September of ’95, WipEout was released, the very first PlayStation game from Psygnosis that was conceived, as stated by Lee Carus in an interview: “(…) after a drunken conversation between Nick Burcombe and Jim Bowers in a pub in Oxton!”. This futuristic racer, with an amazing techno soundtrack featuring music from, for example, The Chemical Brothers, and with strong influences from Powerdrome and F-Zero, grabbed every single one of us! Video games were, after all, also for adults! On PlayStation’s first European year, 40% of total sales of video games were from Psygnosis titles! Now that was an incredible achievement! Consequently, Psygnosis expanded opening a few more satellite offices also attracting some unhappy MicroProse employees. Then, 3D Lemmings and Lomax came along, besides other also interesting titles, like, for instance: the amazingly funny DiscWorld, that also spawned, a year later, a well-received sequel; Formula 1, from Bizarre Creations, one of my favorite racing games on the PC back in ’96 that features an awesome soundtrack which includes a few songs from a couple of Sony artists by that time: Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. My copy of the game came bundled with my Diamond Monster 3DFX card, and, the first time I played it, I was simply blown away! the astonishing Alundra, that, as you know, made me cry, swear and throw dual shocks against pillows; the amazing space blaster Colony Wars that included, besides the awesome soundtrack by Tim Wright, 5 different endings; the mind-blowing and Blade Runner inspired G-Police, that was done whilst the same team was developing Overboard!, with its Caribbean vibe and relaxed tunes; and the inevitable sequels to Destruction Derby and WipEout. Between all that good stuff, there were other horrible games just like this one that I have here: O.D.T. - Escape Or Die Trying, a really weird 3D adventure thing that, recently, saw its Nintendo 64 unreleased version being leaked online. Despite all the commercial success that Psygnosis games demonstrated, internally things weren’t so bright. Sony was constantly changing directors and competition between studios was highly incentivized, rather than helping each other’s out. One of Psygnosis founder, Ian Hetherington, was, consequently, left off the company he founded back in 1984. But he wouldn’t rest, so, after Imagine Software and Psygnosis, Ian and Martin Kenwright founded, in ’99, Evolution Studios, a studio that, curiously, made exclusive video games for Sony’s still to come PlayStation consoles, 2, 3 and 4: the WRC and MotorStorm franchises and, as well, and more recently, Drive Club. Back to Psygnosis, they would go on publishing many sequels for their greatest franchises and, as well, brand new IPs, until Sony decided to shut down all satellite offices, by 2001, turning Psygnosis into SCE Studio Liverpool. They would go on for 11 more years, centering its development into the F1 license, releasing, each year, a new updated and improved game, now for the PlayStation 2 and, for the 2006 edition, also available on Sony’s PSP. 2007 was the year for their first venture into the brand new PlayStation 3, releasing the realistic and beautiful F1 Championship Edition with Sixaxis compatibility, being this one the last F1 game from Studio Liverpool. Also, and along with the F1 games, the other franchise that was still going was WipEout, that saw a huge commercial acclaim with both PS2 and PSP releases: WipEout Fusion, WipEout Pure, WipEout Pulse, WipEout HD and WipEout HD Fury and, lastly, WipeOut 2048 for the PS Vita in 2012, the last game from Psygnosis/Studio Liverpool. So, on the 22nd of August of that year, Sony closed the doors of SCE Studio Liverpool, formerly known as Psygnosis. Sony stated that they were focusing their investment plans on other studios that were working on new and more exciting projects. Psygnosis left us a legacy of awesome titles and franchises, giving, at the same time, the opportunity to small companies to prosper and emerge in this industry being renowned today as the most successful in the business. With that said, every gamer bows to Psygnosis! Thank you so much! Hope that you’ve enjoyed my lookback at one of the most important names in the video gaming industry! Please take a look at my other videos related to Psygnosis, and like, share and subscribe to the Pixel THING! Thank you very much for watching and… I’ll see you all next week!