Some Bullfrog trivia:
First game: Druid II
Well a conversion of the original. Ironically, Dene Carter, the guy behind the original, ended up working for Bullfrog a few years later. He was last spotted lurking in the halls of Lionhead. For the first original Bullfrog game, it would be Fusion (Atari ST, Amiga).
Last game: Quake 3 (PS2)
With a certain sense of karma about it, this conversion is the last title to bear the Bullfrog name (although if you look real closely at some of the particle effects in the first Harry Potter game, you can still see the logo)
Highest review score: 98.5%
ACE magazine for Populous 2.
Lowest review score: 46%
PC Gamer magazine for Magic Carpet 2.
Some Bullfrog Fads:
At various stages, certain toys, sports or games really took hold of the offices and we’d go nuts. This probably won’t mean much to you unless you were there but it’ll certainly give you an idea of how much better this place was than working for a living.
Guns
Guns never really went out. Whether they were projectile or light-based, someone would pretty much always be shooting something at someone else. My personal faves were those laser ones which had a little Heads Up Display that went over your eye. We’d switch all the lights off in the building and hunt each other down in the dark.
Paintballing
It was a logical step really. We’d hook up with some of the guys from Ultima (the local, independent games shop), dress up in camo gear and shoot people in the woods.
Unicycles
It’s just like riding a bike.
Killer
Killer is a game from Steve Jackson which sees people try to “assassinate” targets using all manner of nefarious weapons or devices. Anything goes – a banana makes a useful handgun, a box with a note saying “bomb” can take out a whole room (depending on the size of the box, obviously), Savlon makes great contact poison when smeared over a target’s keyboard. This was great fun but made for one of the most paranoid working environments you’ve ever seen. Everyone had a target but no-one knew who was after them. The whole place was rigged with booby traps and you couldn’t go anywhere without witnesses. Awesome.
Radio-Controlled Cars
This fad came around twice. We experimented with petrol cars and then, thanks to the Sega Rally II machine in the Chill Out Room, restarted the whole electric thing for a couple of weeks.
Go Karting
When we moved to the Business Park, it turns out we were just around the corner from an indoor karting track. We made use of those facilities on a pretty regular basis – whether it be a 15 minute thrash of a lunchtime or organising a couple of teams for the monthly endurance races. Great fun.
C&C o’clock
This was the new slang for 6pm when work would officially end and people would fire up Command And Conquer. Several other games have been honoured with the “o’clock” title – Rainbow Six, Tribes, Total Annihilation – but C&C was the first.
Sausage Pub
One of the longest running traditions was the trip to Wood Street and the King’s Head of a Friday lunchtime.
LEGO Mindstorms
The main thrust of this was to make machines that could follow a tape-line circuit on the floor. Whoever did it the fastest was the winner. There was a lot of LEGO bought in those days.
185 days ago
Nice article Alex, good memories flooding back. The Sausage Pub, Killer and others seem like an awful long time ago. The game I remember playing most was Quakeworld, just the one DM map that some of us played every spare moment, but it wasn’t as BF-wide as C&C.