The tragedy of Psygnosis....how Sony killed an industry juggernaut
MacReady13
Member
In the early days of the original Playstation, they were my fav devs. Wipeout 2097 was a fucking classic.
Connificent
Al Pachinko, Konami President
Fess
Member
Psygnosis was one of the big ones in 1985-1995, the 16-bit days, especially on the Amiga. For many they were seen as the graphics power house, kinda like Naughty Dog today, iirc they loaned their artists to devs with games they published. Whenever the Psygnosis owl was there you knew you would get something special, not always gameplaywise but artistically. Shadow of the Beast is likely the most popular one, besides Lemmings which they milked dry.
Amiga Games by Psygnosis - Lemon Amiga Game Database
Amiga games database with information about every Amiga game ever released!
www.lemonamiga.com
Bloody Crow of Cainhurst
Member
Sony bad 
Walter Matthau
Member
Colony Wars is a forgotten franchise but were some of the highest rated games on PlayStation.
Wipeout was their best work.
Wipeout was their best work.
CamHostage
Member
Counterpoint: Sony caught Psygnosis at just the right time for them both to succeed, and that time was beautiful yet finite.
This was when Windows was about to close out the Euro PC market, and when the cutting-edge expiramentational work with 3D graphics by Psygnosis and its partners (because a big reason Sony bought them was because one of Psygnosis ' studios made a breakthrough PS2 devkit/debugger, I belive they were called SN Systems? ) was at its most valuable. By Psygnosis and Sony working together, Psygnosis was able to become a global star! A star which unfortunately burned itself out (over many years of existence as others began to catch up, with some great years and some bad in between,) but a vital star which left a lasting legacy and spawned many offshoots to seed the gaming galaxy.
...I mean, I like the OP's passion for remembering Psygnosis and companies like it fueling the always-underrrated Amiga scene (btw, Virtual Console never got an Amiga collection, what a shame,) but I see the history differently.
We're both right, in our ways. Yes, Sony could have handled SCE EUROPE better (the PS2 era was particularly dark, when they didn't even put out Wipeout 4 and Airblade and stuff like that. ) but then again, I own some of the SCE Liverpool stuff and a few of the Sony Euro BAM/Namco toss-outs like 24 and Dropship, and I don't think it was the finest era for games made in the UK.
This was when Windows was about to close out the Euro PC market, and when the cutting-edge expiramentational work with 3D graphics by Psygnosis and its partners (because a big reason Sony bought them was because one of Psygnosis ' studios made a breakthrough PS2 devkit/debugger, I belive they were called SN Systems? ) was at its most valuable. By Psygnosis and Sony working together, Psygnosis was able to become a global star! A star which unfortunately burned itself out (over many years of existence as others began to catch up, with some great years and some bad in between,) but a vital star which left a lasting legacy and spawned many offshoots to seed the gaming galaxy.
...I mean, I like the OP's passion for remembering Psygnosis and companies like it fueling the always-underrrated Amiga scene (btw, Virtual Console never got an Amiga collection, what a shame,) but I see the history differently.
We're both right, in our ways. Yes, Sony could have handled SCE EUROPE better (the PS2 era was particularly dark, when they didn't even put out Wipeout 4 and Airblade and stuff like that. ) but then again, I own some of the SCE Liverpool stuff and a few of the Sony Euro BAM/Namco toss-outs like 24 and Dropship, and I don't think it was the finest era for games made in the UK.
Last edited:
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Yep Shadow of the Beast 2 was kinda shit gameplay wise, but it looked amazing for the time, and this was in the days where you would play something just because it looked good and would marvel at intro screens.Psygnosis was one of the big ones in 1985-1995, the 16-bit days, especially on the Amiga. For many they were seen as the graphics power house, kinda like Naughty Dog today, iirc they loaned their artists to devs with games they published. Whenever the Psygnosis owl was there you knew you would get something special, not always gameplaywise but artistically. Shadow of the Beast is likely the most popular one, besides Lemmings which they milked dry.
Amiga Games by Psygnosis - Lemon Amiga Game Database
Amiga games database with information about every Amiga game ever released!
I got it bundled with my first Amiga 500 (screen gems pack).
Windle Poons
Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
All fur coat and no knickers.
Shadow of the Beast was basically a technical demo. Lemmings ported to everything.
Don't get me wrong, the Amiga is still my favourite computer but a lot of their games were flashy intros and not much else.
CamHostage
Member
The tragedy for me is that it now seems to be truly over. SIE Liverpool was already gone and the SIE London Fantasy GaaS project wasn't exactly top on my wishlist, and I don't know that i have loved a European Sony PS game since maybe Killzone Mercenary (RIP SCE/Guerrilla Cambridge, ) so i can't say i don't get why they're gone. However, the idea that PS5 will be the only PlayStation ever to not have its own Wipeout game makes me depressed and worry for the future.
Last edited:
semiconscious
Member
it's healthy that you've chosen to acknowledge this. best wishes...
JusticeForAll
Gold Member
So many good memories, both as a publisher and developer.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
The A Bug's Life movie spin off game was so fucking good.
Also, Colony Wars needs to make a return. It's my dream game series from Sony's back catalogue.
Also, Colony Wars needs to make a return. It's my dream game series from Sony's back catalogue.
Fess
Member
It's not the purchase that was a tragedy, the Amiga was already dead when PlayStation came out, and PC gaming hadn't become big yet. The tragedy was how it ended and what they ended up as after being so big for more than a decade. I don't know the whole story why they stopped doing small studio publishing with injected AAA artistry but that's the big loss imo, there is nothing like that now. During the Amiga days you always knew you would get something special when you saw that owl. Awesome era!
Wipeout alone made them incredible developers
CamHostage
Member
Well, I'm glad a blighty said it, not me...
In the US, there was a bit of Euro-game discrimination going on in that era, and not without some cause IMO. European games were often stiff in controls, overly garish (or grimly spare) in colors, and unforgiving in level design. That's a gross oversimplification of their slate (and there were acclaimed hitmakers like Rare, although for me I had my first turnoff of a Euro game when I tried and hated Wizards and Warriors,) but especially as Amiga hits like Stormlord and Chaos Engine and Turrican started coming over to Genesis, those games we US gamers drooled over screenshots of in import mags, the gameplay often was not as pretty as the artistry. On the whole, the rep was probably unfair (it was also a game design community bult primarily around 1-button controllers), but i think you could really feel in what came over that Euro game development had its deepest roots in demoscene culture.
And that style-over-substance situation carried into the 3D era. When heralding the history of Psygnosis, let's not forget that they clunked at times too with stuff like ODT and City of Lost Children... don't forget Spice World! They were not always perfect, but they sure were prolific, and practice did in some classic games make perfection.
Last edited:
Fess
Member
I thought Shadow of the Beast 1 looked better, that parallax scroll was legendary.
Beast 2 was more atmospheric perhaps. But mostly it made Elden Ring seem like a kids game regarding difficulty lol. A friend of mine actually reached the end. He was some kind of ninja gamer. But it bugged out at the end so he never managed to finish it. Ouch!
I always liked Blood Money a ton as well. It was unique at the time. Kinda wild that the dev ended up as Rockstar making GTA!
And Agony. The loading screens, owl animation and title music was awesome. Gameplay… Nah.
That video has a number of issues, I'm not sure the author did thorough research, he admits he wasn't alive at the time. Most from the UK alive at that time at least consider late 80s, early 90s Psygnosis to be their golden area not its Playstation mid 90s output.
What killed Psygnosis was itself, there was an interview on Youtube (might have been Arcade Attack) with an employee who was there from the early 90s to the end 1999/2000 and he stated Psygnosis has become massively bloated with a huge staff churning out mid games and also deeply inefficient with lots of infighting that the bosses couldn't control, he said near the end Sony fired something like 500 staff and it still wasn't enough to turn it around.
What killed Psygnosis was itself, there was an interview on Youtube (might have been Arcade Attack) with an employee who was there from the early 90s to the end 1999/2000 and he stated Psygnosis has become massively bloated with a huge staff churning out mid games and also deeply inefficient with lots of infighting that the bosses couldn't control, he said near the end Sony fired something like 500 staff and it still wasn't enough to turn it around.
SirTerry-T
Member
They were Juggernauts in the UK and Euro dev scene, long before Sony turned up. Their Amiga output is legendary.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
They had a lot of good games as well. Just looking through a list I see Dungeon Master, Killing Game Show, Project X, Walker etc. But stuff like Shadow of the Beast were indeed just graphical and audio showcases, but back then we were buying shareware disks with animated AT-AT walkers and watching them over and over so sometimes a showcase was all you were after.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
You try playing Manic Miner, a platformer requiring pixel perfect accuracy using a keyboard with rubber keys and see if you don't get psychosis.
CamHostage
Member
Well, they ran out out of jobs. Since Psygnosis renamed to SCE Liverpool in 2001 (they are MANY offshoots of Psygnosis, they were a publisher and sort of a facilitator in addition to making games,) they only ever made Wipeout and F1 games. F1 went elsewhere, and Wipeout was always a niche product loved by hard-core fans but not something that kept its mainstream appeal, especially as the Racing genre has evaporated with this new generation of picky consumers. They should be still out there making Wipeout because PS maybe isn't PS anymore without Wipeout, but as a studio making money for a corporation, they ended up at a hard end.
Last edited:
Randall365
Member
Psygnosis were the publisher of Lemmings - but the developer was a Scottish company called DMA Design.
You'll probably have heard of DMA Design of course - after Lemmings they developed the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series and changed their name to Rockstar North.
You'll probably have heard of DMA Design of course - after Lemmings they developed the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series and changed their name to Rockstar North.
CamHostage
Member
Man, I don't know, I feel you for sure there!
I just dragged out my PSP, and it's unbelievable how many spinoff and exclusive franchise games (not to mention pure originals) that little system had! That, and the PS3 era of PSN had fun diversions like Motorstorm RC or Pain or the Ratchet Booty game or the Infamous vampire oneoff or those Uncharted/Wipeout Pinball tables. It all ended, and I don't get know why?
There are reasons, yes. The indie market filled the mid-game gap (and probably overfilled it,) so there's that. Also, the financial situation of having small teams in-house making/losing a few thousand dollars instead of every person in the building making one massive AAAA work to make/lose hundreds of millions is hard to justify on a ledger (even if the little ones sometimes made it into the $hundred-millions, the blockbusters can go up u the $billions, and a company just had to take the ludicrous bet.) But man, it sucked all the fun out of being a PS fan when your favorite studios only make 1 game a generation (Naughty Dog is still at 0 games this gen, discounting the games they remastered) and there are so few familiar brands to sustain between big releases. I don't just need 30 hours of cinematic experiences once or twice a year, Sony, sometimes I just want to enjoy what makes me feel good about being a Playstation fan.
Wipeout may be a relic attraction in a dying genre, but Wipeout is also one of the key reasons why many of us bought 7 PlayStation systems in a row when we had lots of other choices.
The identity of PlayStation is IMO bigger than any one title's financial return.
Last edited:
kiphalfton
Member
People criticize Ubisoft and Activision all the time, but Sony deserves more hate. This gen they have seemingly done their damnedest to erase whatever good will they had established in the past.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Walker was also a bad ass game from them, traded a lot on the same killing of tinsy tiny sprites.
Windle Poons
Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
CamHostage
Member
Yep, Psygnosis had lots of "partners" as a coordinator of a lot of the UK game development scene; some of them came aboard Sony when Psygnosis was bought (Psygnosis Studio Camden for example became a founder of SCE London, one of Sony's most important development houses, particularly behind the scenes for their hardware initiatives in Eyetoy and VR,) some remained their own thing. And even when we celebrate Psygnosis's great works as a PlayStation developer, it's worth noting that they were still spawning startups and seeding for publishing; a new team named Psyignosis Leeds made the stunning Wipeout 3, for example, and ATD's Rollcage was a midera-PS1 game published by Psygnosis.) The legacy of Psygnosis needs to be understood not just for what they made, but for what they facilitated.
Also, yep, DMA was one of these studios worked under the Psygnosis umbrella. Psygnosis (and then Sony) did keep the Lemmings name, ultimately. They continued to make new versions through PS2, PSP, Vita and PS3, also a mobile game in 2018.
I kind of wonder if GTA becoming a "PS franchise" in its explosive era was part of the Psygnosis heritage, in a way? DMA did go off and make some Nintendo games (they also got caught up in the sad mess of Gremlin Graphics and Infogrames,) but in addition to splintering off some talent along the way (some of which went on to make Sony games like Buzz,) they became megastars when their produced GTA 3 exclusively for PS2 in only the system's second year. Partly GTA3 came to PS because of GTA1 & 2 were Greatest Hits titles (and they liked consoles at the time,) but also Sony committed to the UK gaming scene in a big way with its Psygnosis activity and its SCE Europe office. There's also the factor of Renderware; Criterion as far as I know has no connection to Psygnosis, but a Brit studio being a key middleware provider for PS2 mirrors what happened with Psygnosis and PS1 (Criterion even made a PS exclusive game, after giving up on Dreamcast,) and Renderware was key to making GTA3. Not a direct connection, but Xbox didn't have those European roots and Nintendo really was only interested in Rare (and even that didn't last forever...), but Sony had boots on those grounds because of the hand that Psygnosis always offered to shake for a deal.
Last edited:
Trilobit
Absolutely Cozy
Holy crap, I never knew I wanted a Destruction Derby game as much as I do! I'd love one with modern physics.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Looks like the list I was looking at was not 100% accurate or included games published by Psygnosis only on specific platforms.
Still now I have remembered a bunch of games to load on to my Raspberry Pi.
Mibu no ookami
Banned
Gamers need to take a hard look at the revisionist history going on.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
I think I've gone through the reality of what happened to Psygnosis in detail in the past, but the narrative laid out in that video is pretty far off the mark.
It wasn't Sony's fault, at least not in the sort of "big bad corporation methodically imposes its will" way that I often see as the media narrative.
I mean for one thing, had the then Sony Imagesoft not stepped in and started feeding them licenses, they might not have survived to the Playstation era.
It wasn't Sony's fault, at least not in the sort of "big bad corporation methodically imposes its will" way that I often see as the media narrative.
I mean for one thing, had the then Sony Imagesoft not stepped in and started feeding them licenses, they might not have survived to the Playstation era.
Mibu no ookami
Banned
80% of youtube videos are grifters.
I know there is an audience who hates X or is angry at X. I'll make a video blaming X for something to get views. No one will fact check me.
Most gamers don't realize that Psygnosis was primarily a publisher. They also don't recognize that most of the games made by SCEE were really mid and many even the larger franchises like Destruction Derby, F1, WRC, The Getaway, weren't selling enough copies. They were all apart of a pre-quality first party development era. Sony made major investments in first party development starting at the turn of the century and most of those investments have paid off including European investments into Guerrilla.
No offense against the UK but does anyone want to name the top 5 UK game studios?
Sony gets shit for closing evolution studios who then essentially became apart of Codemasters. How is Codemasters looking right now?
It's rare that Sony closes a studio and the key people there go on to do bigger and better things. MAYBE Bondi? And even their partnerships that don't end up in acquisitions rarely turn into anything. The biggest obviously being From, but the rest? Quantic Dream, Supermassive Games, Ready at Dawn, Ninja Theory?
CamHostage
Member
Heh, one of the not-so-friendly aspects of the Psygnosis legacy is that Psygnosis takes a lot of credit where it should be spread around.
Maybe that's not a fair accusation (I don't know how detailed the credits rosters are on some of these old games?) but it's already been pointed out that games often thought of as Psygnosis hits like Lemmings and Agony were actually made by other studios and published or produced by Psygnosis-proper. It's hard to find an accurate list of all the titles and history that Psygnosis was involved in, and that's part of the legacy of some of these facilitator/publisher companies that gamers know only what was presented to them, not all of the credits behind the games.
Last edited:
Guess I was too young to really know who they were back then I'm not sure if I had an Amiga but I remember my mom buying us a The Commodore 64 from a yard sale or somethingPsygnosis was one of the big ones in 1985-1995, the 16-bit days, especially on the Amiga. For many they were seen as the graphics power house, kinda like Naughty Dog today, iirc they loaned their artists to devs with games they published. Whenever the Psygnosis owl was there you knew you would get something special, not always gameplaywise but artistically. Shadow of the Beast is likely the most popular one, besides Lemmings which they milked dry.
Amiga Games by Psygnosis - Lemon Amiga Game Database
Amiga games database with information about every Amiga game ever released!
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
I guess if you want to break it down, there was a Psygnosis that was synonymous with Amiga, and a Psygnosis that was synonymous with Playstation. And although there was a lot of crossover between those two era's, particularly in the mid to late 90's, by the time the millennium hit... it was a whole other thing. And a much lesser one at that.
I think unless you were there over that period, you wouldn't really understand how profound the changes were over those years. In the sense that essentially one was a publisher who's success was entirely built off the work of bed-room coders, and the other was trying to be an internal studio for a major platform holder. What worked in one era, not only didn't work nearly as well in another, but was to a large degree practically impossible.
Pre and post-internet are 2 separate worlds in so many ways, especially when it comes to game-dev.
I think unless you were there over that period, you wouldn't really understand how profound the changes were over those years. In the sense that essentially one was a publisher who's success was entirely built off the work of bed-room coders, and the other was trying to be an internal studio for a major platform holder. What worked in one era, not only didn't work nearly as well in another, but was to a large degree practically impossible.
Pre and post-internet are 2 separate worlds in so many ways, especially when it comes to game-dev.
The Sum of Zero
Member
RIP Colony Wars. What I wouldn't give for a rerelease or a remaster of at least the first game.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Psygnosis was multiplatform back in the 90s. Saturn, N64, PC with roots with Amiga. Then at some point I think late in the 90s, Sony cut off all ports.
Last edited:
Darkmakaimura
Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
They were damned good in the 80s too. I used to have a lot of their games on the Commodore 64.
Fess
Member
There is Wreckfest. It is exactly that game. And Wreckfest 2 is on early access now, go get it! The wreck physics are great. In general I would say that the cars are too fast and tracks too long for the chaos we had in Destruction Derby 1, it's more like Destruction Detby 2 which was similar. But there is the bowl and 8 tracks which always end up with mashed up smoking blocks of medal for cars.
